Motilal Oswal Mutual Fund

Before looking at fund performance, it helps to know who's actually running the show. Here's the AMC's core information at a glance.

Motilal Oswal Financial Services came into existence way back in 1987 and started off as a sub-brokerage house operated by only two people, and not as a comprehensive financial company as is seen today. In November 2008, the company formed Motilal Oswal Asset Management Company to venture into the mutual fund business.

A year down the line, it rang the NASDAQ opening bell, becoming the first Indian fund house to accomplish this feat. Starting from a single plan, the AMC has diversified into funds covering index, thematic, and international investments.

Most of the fund houses claim that they have a long-term approach to investing. However, Motilal Oswal has taken a different turn and based its whole process of equity investments on one particular strategy, which is referred to as QGLP. It is the strategy that decides the entry and exit of companies in the portfolio.

• Quality -  Companies with well-managed operations, solid balance sheets, and high returns on equity, rather than those that are just good stories.
• Growth -  A viable means of growing profits in the intermediate to long term through the fundamentals of the business.
• Longevity - A sustainable competitive advantage, allowing for that growth over an extended period of time, not just for a few good quarters.
• Price - Investing at an appropriate valuation, as even an excellent company may become a bad investment when purchased too expensively.
• Buy Right, Sit Tight - Once the stock passes all the filters, the fund will hold through the short-term fluctuations in the market. 

Motilal Oswal's funds are not just confined to its flagship concentrated equity philosophy. It also manages debt, hybrid, index, and international funds. This makes it possible for the AMC to cater to both risk-averse individuals looking to park money as well as aggressive individuals.

The table below shows the various funds and their typical suitability.

The ranking of the fund on the returns graph is highly dependent on the time period chosen, so it would be wise to compare its 1-year, 3-year, and 5-year figures along with the benchmark before labeling anything as the best.

Here are the current positions of some of Motilal Oswal Best Performing Mutual Funds. 

Motilal Oswal Mid Cap Fund

Motilal Oswal Mid Cap Fundfollows a portfolio of around 35 stocks and is benchmarked to Nifty Midcap 150 TRI, with a focus on investing in quality mid-cap companies having a sustainable competitive advantage, and is managed by Ajay Khandelwal, Ankit Agarwal, Varun Sharma, and Rakesh Shetty.

Motilal Oswal Large And Mid Cap Fund

Motilal Oswal Large & Mid Cap Fund has been designed to allocate a minimum of 35% of its portfolio to both large-cap and mid-cap equities, ensuring that the fund is comparatively less risky than the pure mid-cap fund listed above.

Motilal Oswal ELSS Tax Saver Fund

Motilal Oswal ELSS Tax Saver Fund offers the best of both worlds; it is an equity fund that can deliver growth along with a three-year lock-in period plus tax deduction under Section 80C of the Income Tax Act.”

Motilal Oswal Flexi Cap Fund

Motilal Oswal Flexi Cap Fund is not constrained by an arbitrary allocation between large, mid, or small caps, allowing the portfolio managers the freedom to weight their investments based on where they are finding QGLP eligible stocks.

Motilal Oswal Multi Asset Passive FoF

Motilal Oswal Multi Asset Passive FoF allocates investments in a combination of equity, debt, and gold funds as opposed to direct stock selection, and this justifies why Motilal Oswal has relatively stable returns for the last 3 and 5 years as compared to the other 4 equity funds.

The fund managers behind a scheme matter almost as much as the strategy itself, since it's their calls on individual stocks and sector weights that decide outcomes. Here's who currently manages Motilal Oswal's key schemes.

No AMC is a one-size-fits-all answer, and Motilal Oswal is a clearer example of that than most. Here's a balanced look at what works in its favour and what deserves a second thought before you invest.

Advantages:

• A clearly defined, repeatable investment process (QGLP) rather than ad hoc stock picking.
• Strong long-term track record in flagship funds like Motilal Oswal Midcap Fund and Flexi Cap Fund.
• One of the wider ranges of international and passive fund-of-funds options among Indian AMCs, useful for global diversification.
• Backed by MOFSL, a financial services group with decades of market experience.
• Fund management teams with long average tenures on their respective schemes.

Things to watch out for:

• Concentrated portfolios mean sharper swings, both up and down, compared to broadly diversified funds.
• Many top-performing schemes fall in the Very High risk category, including sectoral, thematic, and international funds.
• Several funds have launched only in the last one to two years, so long-term return data isn't available yet.
• Expense ratios vary widely across schemes, and some active funds run higher than category averages.

With over 52 schemes on offer, picking the right one comes down to matching the fund's style to your own goal and risk appetite, not chasing whichever one topped the returns chart last year.

• If you want core, low-cost exposure, an index fund tracking Nifty or the S&P 500 is a simpler starting point than an active scheme.
• If you're comfortable with concentrated, high-conviction bets, look at the Flexi Cap, Midcap, or Focused funds built on the QGLP process.
• If a theme genuinely interests you, such as defence or innovation, understand that thematic funds carry higher risk and work best as a smaller part of a portfolio, not the core of it.
• If tax-saving is the goal, the ELSS fund is the only scheme with a lock-in and Section 80C benefit.

Investing in a Motilal Oswal fund through MySIPonline takes just a few steps.

1. Sign up for a free account on the MySIPonline website or app.
2. Add the fund you've shortlisted from Motilal Oswal's scheme list to your cart.
3. Complete your KYC by uploading identity and bank proof, if you haven't already.
4. Choose SIP or lumpsum, depending on how you'd rather invest.
5. Pay via UPI or net banking to complete the transaction.
6. Track your investment anytime from the MySIPonline dashboard or app.

Tax treatment on Motilal Oswal funds depends on what the scheme actually invests in, and this is where a lot of investors get caught out, since not every fund here is a plain equity or debt fund.

1. Equity funds : (Flexi Cap, Midcap, ELSS, and similar): Short-term gains (under 1 year) are taxed at 20%, and long-term gains (over 1 year) above ₹1.25 lakh in a year are taxed at 12.5%.
2. Debt funds: Gains are added to your income and taxed at your applicable slab rate, regardless of holding period.
3. Fund of Funds and international schemes (Nasdaq 100 FoF, Gold and Silver FoF, and similar): These generally fall under "specified mutual fund" rules, taxed at your income slab rate irrespective of how long you've held them, since they don't hold enough in domestic equity to qualify for equity taxation.