Guess which 8 equity funds grew over ₹500 crore last month?

Summary: Spotting Parag Parikh Flexi Cap on this list is no surprise. It’s practically the poster child for investor trust. But what about the others? Can you guess which funds made the cut? Here’s a clue: the list includes one small-cap fund, one value fund, one large-cap fund, one focused fund, one large & mid-cap fund and two more flexi-cap funds.

When we say a mutual fund “grew in size”, what we’re really talking about is Assets under Management (AuM). AuM is the total money invested in that fund by investors like you. AuM is essentially the fund’s corpus. If 10,000 investors each invest Rs 2 in a fund, its AuM would be Rs 20,000.

But AuM isn’t static. It can change daily because of two factors:

1. Market movement: If the stocks held by the fund go up in price, the fund’s portfolio value increases, and so does its AuM.
2. Investor flows: When investors put fresh money into the fund (through lumpsum or SIPs), the AuM rises. Conversely, if investors exit, AuM falls.

This means that a fund’s rising AuM can signal two things: a) its portfolio has done well, or b) it’s attracting new investor money. Often, it’s both. That’s why AuM is a powerful lens to understand investor sentiment. A consistently rising AuM suggests confidence in the fund, while a shrinking AuM could mean investors are pulling out or performance has disappointed.

With that context on AuM, here are the eight diversified equity funds that saw the sharpest growth in size last month.

The funds that grew the most in August

In August, eight actively managed equity funds saw their AuM increase by more than Rs 500 crore (direct plans only). Here’s the full list, ranked from the lowest increase to the highest:

Do note that some other funds did cross the Rs 500-crore mark at different points during the month, but here we are only looking at those that were over Rs 500 crore higher at both the start and end of August. 

What does this tell us?

There’s a clear trend emerging: flexi-cap funds are the biggest crowd-pullers right now. Parag Parikh Flexi Cap and HDFC Flexi Cap alone added over Rs 5,000 crore in assets between them last month. This shows that investors are favouring diversified, category-agnostic funds where managers have complete freedom to pick stocks across large-, mid- and small-cap segments.

It’s also telling that two HDFC funds and two ICICI Prudential funds made this list. 

Also, the fact that ICICI Prudential Value Discovery pulled in over Rs 500 crore is noteworthy. It shows that value-oriented strategies still have a draw.

Bandhan Small Cap’s Rs 593-crore jump stands out as well, especially in a month where net investments softened in this category.

Now, here’s an interesting part. Most of these funds have stellar long-term track records. Nippon India Large Cap, for example, is the best performer in its category over 10 years and second-best over five years. Parag Parikh Flexi Cap and HDFC Flexi Cap have also consistently ranked near the top over five- and 10-year periods.

That said, there are a couple of outliers. ICICI Prudential Value Discovery still sits in the bottom half over 10 years (though it has bounced back strongly, ranking fifth over five years). Kotak Flexicap remains a middle-of-the-pack performer over both five and 10 years despite its AuM growth.

The takeaway is that growing AuM usually reflects investor confidence and, more often than not, good past performance. But AuM alone shouldn’t drive your decisions. Think of it as just one piece of the puzzle. You need to combine it with performance consistency (three-, five-, 10-year returns), portfolio quality (how diversified/concentrated it is, and what kind of stocks it holds), expense ratio (because costs silently eat into your returns), risk-adjusted returns, fund manager’s track record, among others. 

If that sounds like a lot of work, Value Research Fund Advisor has you covered. Our analysts track every major metric — AuM trends, performance consistency, portfolio quality, risk-adjusted performance and costs — for every equity fund in India. We don’t just report which funds are getting bigger, we go deeper to tell you whether they truly deserve a place in your portfolio.

On Fund Advisor, you’ll find a carefully curated shortlist of recommended funds across categories — flexi-cap, small-cap, value funds and more — all chosen with a long-term investor’s perspective in mind.

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Also read: Why this 5-star mid-cap fund's size has grown 7x in 10 years