A fund which selects stocks based on the company's leadership position in a sector rather than by market cap, it has floated to the top mainly due to three-year returns. It has improved its ratings from three to four stars in the last one year. The fund leans towards giant caps and owns a compact portfolio of 30 odd stocks, made possible by its small asset size. The investment thesis is that sector leaders manage to earn significantly higher shareholder returns than the also-rans in an industry and thus deliver wealth creation over the long run. The investment approach is bottom-up and growth-oriented. The fund swears by buy-and-hold and has a low portfolio turnover of 40 per cent. The house has a strong quality bias and stays away from companies with balance-sheet issues or unsustainable growth. Despite a relatively short track record compared to stalwarts in the category, the fund has acquitted itself well against the peers.

The fund's one-, three- and five-year returns are all ahead of the category by two to three percentage points. Though the fund's focus on sector leaders allows it greater freedom to invest across the market-capitalisation range, in practice, the focus has been mainly on large-cap stocks. Large-cap allocations have been at 90 per cent plus consistently, higher than most of the peers in this category.

It's a good fund for the core portfolio, given its well-defined and unique investment proposition.