ICICI Prudential Value Discovery Fund follows the contrarian style of investing, it is a top-of-mind choice in the multi-cap category. Having climbed to a four-star rating way back in 2009, it has held onto a four- or five-star rating since then. It has enjoyed a five-star rating in the last one year.

Despite its label, the fund doesn't hunt for deep-value stocks but for stocks that have growth potential and are trading at a discount to their intrinsic value. The parameters used to measure value are price-to-book value and relative market capitalisation. The fund is market-cap agnostic.

From a high mid-cap exposure a year ago, the fund has raised large-cap bets to 75-80 per cent of the portfolio in the last few months due to more attractive valuations in this space. Mid-cap bets have been moderated from above 40 per cent to 20 per cent. This has probably helped the fund contain losses well during the recent market correction.

ICICI Prudential Value Discovery Fund has one of the best records in its category in the last five years, beating its benchmark as well as the peers. The fund's three- and five-year returns are 9-11 percentage points ahead of that of the benchmark and about 6 percentage points ahead of that of the category average.

Popularity has seen its asset size burgeon to over Rs 15,000 crore. This seems to have led to a large-cap tilt in its portfolio choices. But the fund's multi-cap approach ensures that it doesn't have to dilute its contrarian mandate in order to manage a larger fund size.