After a bad patch from 2008 to 2010, Birla Sun Life Tax Plan has made a big comeback in the last five years, with a particularly good run since 2014. The fund's rankings, which had slipped to two stars in 2011-12, recovered sharply to three-four stars in the last three years. The fund has delivered a particularly large outperformance over its benchmark and peers in the last couple of years. The fund's investment strategy focuses on a diversified and high-quality portfolio, with parameters such as capital ratios and balance-sheet strength used to judge quality. It uses a combination of top-down and bottom-up approaches to take sector/stock positions. The fund avoids highly leveraged plays. Staying more or less fully invested at all times, the fund parks roughly half of its portfolio in large caps, with 35-40 per cent in mid caps and the rest in small-cap stocks. This allocation does not swing wildly over time.

The fund has had its share of challenging years, with the periods between 2000-01 and 2008-10 seeing it underperform the benchmarks. But it has delivered good three-, five-, ten- and 15-year CAGRs. The returns since inception, at 21 per cent, are not to be scoffed at. The fund's returns in the last two years have been helped by the significant outperformance by the quality pack that it favours. The fund's overweight positions in engineering and capital-goods majors paid off big in the first part of 2015. So did its underweight positions in financial services and energy.

If you like a fund which has proved itself across not one but multiple market cycles, this one fits the bill.