Small-cap stocks have offered quite a bumpy ride to investors since 2008. But this is a fund which has navigated the ride very well to deliver a consistent outperformance of the index throughout two market cycles. The consistent show has earned it a four-star rating from 2015, with an improvement in the ranking from three stars in the earlier years. About 75-85 per cent of its portfolio is invested in small caps, with a 15-20 per cent mid-cap allocation. The fund's mandate requires 65 per cent of assets to be invested in stocks that are not among the top 300 companies by market cap, which gives it considerable flexibility in portfolio choices. In practice, the fund has been overweight on small caps relative to the peers and underweight on both mid- and large-cap holdings. It usually follows a buy-and-hold strategy, giving the small-cap bets enough time to pay off. In a category that has many funds that chase growth stocks, this fund doesn't fight shy of buying cyclicals, provided it can see the prospects of a turnaround and an improving ROCE.

This is a rare small-cap fund to have beaten its benchmark in every one of the last eight years from 2008. It has also stayed ahead of the peers in every year but 2012. This gap has widened of late with five-year and three-year returns beating the benchmark by double-digit margins. The strong performance has seen the fund's assets expanding rapidly and the fund has restricted fresh lump-sum investments.

This fund provides a great alternative to directly investing in the risky micro-cap segment of the market.