Fund Pick: Bandhan Large Cap Fund's sectoral bets drive outperformance

Bandhan Large Cap Fund stayed in the top 30 percentile of its category till September 2025, delivering consistent outperformance across long-term and SIP returns

Launched in June 2006, the Bandhan Large Cap Fund featured in the top 30th percentile of the large-cap funds category of the Crisil Mutual Fund Ranking (CMFR) for four consecutive quarters through September 2025. The fund’s assets under management (AUM) stood at ₹1,916 crore at end-September 2025 compared with ₹1,073 crore at end-September 2022.

 

Manish Gunwani and Prateek Poddar have been managing the fund since December 2024. The objective of the scheme is

 

to ensure long-term capital appreciation by investing in equities and equity-related securities of large-cap companies.

 

Trailing returns

 

The fund has outperformed the benchmark over two-, three-, five-and seven-year trailing periods.

 

Additionally, it has outperformed its peers (funds ranked in the large-cap category of CMFR in September 2025) over one-, two-, three-, five-, seven- and 10-year trailing periods.

 

To put this in perspective, an investment of ₹10,000 in the fund on December 18, 2020, would have increased to ₹20,236 on December 18, 2025, at an annualised rate of 15.13 per cent. The same investment in the category and the benchmark, on the other hand, would have grown to ₹19,658 (14.47 per cent) and ₹20,067 (14.94 per cent), respectively.

 

A systematic investment plan (SIP) is a disciplined way of investing in mutual funds, wherein a specific amount is invested

 

at regular intervals. A monthly SIP of ₹10,000 in the fund over 7 years, totalling ₹8.40 lakh, would have grown to ₹14.48 lakh (annualised return of 15.41 per cent). In comparison, the investment in the benchmark would have risen to ₹14.30 lakh (15.07 per cent) as on December 18, 2025. Overall, the fund has outperformed the benchmark over one-, three-, five- and 7-year SIP periods.

 

Portfolio analysis

 

Over the past three years, the fund’s exposure to large-cap stocks has been higher, in accordance with its mandate. The allocation to large-cap stocks averaged 83.54 per cent, while that to mid- and small-cap stocks averaged 7.80 per cent and 6.12 per cent, respectively. In comparison, the category average investments in large-cap stocks stood at 85.15 per cent, followed by 7.53 per cent in mid-cap and 3.09 per cent in small-cap ones. The fund’s allocation to mid-and small-cap stocks surpassed its peers.

 

The portfolio was diversified across 23 sectors. The highest average allocation was to financial services at 32.44 per cent, followed by information technology (11.91 per cent), oil, gas and consumable fuels (8.38 per cent), automobile and auto components (7.45 per cent), along with FMCG (7.41 per cent). The fund’s overweight positions compared with its category in certain mid- and small-cap stocks and high-return sectors such as realty (25 per cent returns), consumer services (17.99 per cent) and financial services (13.5 per cent), contributed to its outperformance over the past three years.

 

During the period under review, the fund took exposure to 193 stocks and held nine consistently. Some key contributing stocks to the portfolio were HDFC Bank, ICICI Bank, Reliance Industries and Larsen & Toubro.