A fund which has grown in short order to become the largest in the ELSS category, Axis Long Term Equity has the performance record to back its asset size. The fund has been lodged strongly at a five-star rating for the last three years. The fund's strategy of buying quality stocks with a growth bias has paid off handsomely, with the fund outpacing its category by big margins in every year since launch. While selecting stocks, the fund looks for a superior and scalable business, a high return on capital and secular growth. The fund is also large-cap oriented, with large-cap allocations actually climbing from 55 to 70 per cent in the last couple of years. Mid caps get a 30-40 per cent allocation in the portfolio, with negligible small caps.

The fund, being a later entrant, has managed to skip the bear market of 2008. Its performance in 2011, however, showed that it is able to contain loses in a falling market. It has delivered convincing outperformance of both benchmark and peers in most bull years - be it 2010, 2013 or 2014. However, this outperformance is also attributable to the exceptional returns delivered by the fund's 'growth and quality' style of investing in the last five years. The fund has been overweight on domestic consumer stocks such as private banks, housing and automobiles, which have been the front runners of this bull market.

Overall it's a solid fund if you like to own quality businesses in the listed space.