Two reliable large-cap funds built for good and bad times

Summary: Markets are showing early signs of recovery, and history suggests large caps usually lead the way. But instead of chasing last year’s winners, we analysed five-year rolling returns to identify large-cap funds that delivered consistently across market cycles. The results may change how you shortlist funds.

The Indian stock market has had a rough-ish 2025. But beneath the surface, conditions are slowly improving, and history suggests this is where large caps usually start to shine.

Let’s start with earnings, the first lever of growth. India Inc’s latest quarterly results show double-digit year-on-year growth in both revenues and profits. That is an important shift after several uneven quarters.

Policy support is also kicking in. GST rate cuts announced in the third quarter are only beginning to flow through the system, with their full impact likely to be visible by the end of FY26. Add to that India’s second-quarter GDP growth of 8.2 per cent, well ahead of expectations.

Flows are another tell. Foreign institutional investors (FII) sold roughly $30 billion worth of equities in 2024 and another $24 billion till November 2025. But the pace of selling has eased. FIIs even turned net buyers briefly in October 2025. Meanwhile, domestic institutional investors (DII) poured in a record $70 billion, cushioning the market and laying the ground for a recovery.

In short, the early signs are already visible. Although small caps have been about 10 per cent down in the last 12 months, Nifty 100 (a proxy for large caps) has been in the green, at over 3.5 per cent.

This pattern is typical. When markets recover, large caps usually lead.

And Raamdeo Agrawal, chairman of Motilal Oswal Financial Services, recently echoed this sentiment. As quoted by Economic Times, he said, “When the tide turns, the large caps will move. Now probably is the time when large caps will start doing better over the next four to five years.”

Which is why this becomes a good moment to ask a more useful question: Which large-cap funds have been the most consistent over time?

How we measured consistency

Instead of looking at point-to-point returns, we focused on five-year rolling returns between December 2015 and December 2025.

Rolling returns sound Greek to you?

Let’s explain it simply. Imagine you start a five-year race every single day.

One race runs from January 2016 to January 2021. Another from February 2016 to February 2021. Then March 2016 to March 2021… and so on.

Each race measures how much a fund earned over five years starting on that day. By doing this repeatedly, you avoid judging a fund based on just one lucky (or unlucky) period. You see how it performs across all kinds of market conditions.

That’s what rolling returns do. They test consistency, not timing.

Now, coming back to the story, we shortlisted 15 top-performing active large-cap funds in the last 10 years (as of December 14, 2025). For each fund, we checked:

1. How often it beat the average large-cap fund based on the daily five-year rolling period between December 14, 2020 and December 14, 2025.
2. How often it beat the Nifty 100 Total Return Index, a benchmark used by many active large-cap funds.

Outperformance against average large-cap fund and benchmark

Seven funds beat the average large-cap fund every single time over the past five years. In fact, 13 of the 15 funds did so over 90 per cent of the time.

However, outperforming the benchmark is a tougher test.

Only seven of the 15 funds managed to beat the Nifty 100 TRI more than 60 per cent of the time. And just two funds—Canara Robeco Large Cap and Edelweiss Large Cap—managed to do so over 95 per cent of the time. Crucially, these two funds also beat the category average 100 per cent of the time.

Should you invest based on this alone?

Consistency is a strong starting point, but it isn’t the final answer.

Portfolio construction, risk profile and your own goals still matter. That’s why our seasoned analysts at Value Research go beyond raw numbers to build a curated list of both active and passive large-cap funds, suited to different investor needs.

If you want guidance that cuts through noise and focuses on long-term reliability, explore Value Research Fund Advisor. It helps you choose funds not just for the next rally, but for the full market cycle ahead.

Explore Fund Advisor today

Also read: Are India's 2 most popular large-cap funds worth the hype?