Seven years with Franklin India Mid Cap Fund

My investment in Franklin India Mid Cap Fund (erstwhile Franklin India Prima Fund) continues in the seventh year. I haven’t made any new investments in the fund since Jan’25 (Figure 1) due to other financial commitments but now I plan to restart the SIP sometime later this year.

The fund has been underperforming its benchmark (Figure 2), the Nifty Midcap 150 Index, since I started investing in it. It did shrink the underperformance in Apr’25—thanks to Trump’s tariffs—but now has again fallen behind the benchmark index by 2% in XIRR.

But at 18.9% XIRR, the returns are still handsome.

How does Franklin India Mid Cap stack up against its competitors?

I analysed CRISIL’s Mutual Fund Ranking and compared my returns to each of the mid cap mutual funds. Here’s how I conducted my calculations.

1. I included only those funds that were established before my first investment in the Franklin India Mid Cap. Therefore, you won’t find ITI Mid Cap Fund in the list, as it was launched after my first investment in the Franklin India Mid Cap.
2. For the competitor funds, I used the same investment amounts and dates as those for my investment in Franklin India Mid Cap. This approach allowed me to answer the question, “What if I had invested in XYZ Midcap Fund?”

The table below illustrates the profit I would have earned had I invested in other mid cap mutual funds. It pretty evident that Franklin India Mid Cap Fund not only underperforms the benchmark Nifty Midcap 150 Index, it also underperforms most of its competitors with a rank of 14 from 20.

Mutual fund	Profit (as of Jul’26)	Rank
Invesco India Mid Cap Fund	153.0	1
Edelweiss Mid Cap Fund	145.4	2
Nippon India Growth Mid Cap Fund	138.5	3
Mahindra Manulife Mid Cap Fund	135.9	4
HSBC Mid Cap Fund	134.7	5
HDFC Mid Cap Fund	134.4	6
Motilal Oswal Midcap Fund	133.5	7
ICICI Prudential MidCap Fund	133.1	8
Kotak Midcap Fund	128.1	9
Sundaram Mid Cap Fund	121.0	10
Baroda BNP Paribas Mid Cap Fund	118.6	11
Tata Mid Cap Fund	111.0	12
Aditya Birla Sun Life Midcap Fund	102.7	13
Franklin India Mid Cap Fund ★	100.9	14
SBI Midcap Fund	100.2	15
Axis Midcap Fund	99.6	16
PGIM India Midcap Fund	97.8	17
LIC MF Midcap Fund	96.8	18
UTI Mid Cap Fund	89.9	19
DSP Midcap Fund	88.1	20

In fact, the fund has always been at the bottom third amongst its competitors throughout my investing journey of seven years (Figure 3).

We can get a better sense of the journey each mutual fund has taken over the past seven years with the below bar race chart. It shows all the mid cap mutual funds from previous table and their performance over the last seven years.

The bar race chart was created using Flourish, you can view the Flourish hosted version along with data over here.

A couple of observations from the above bar race chart.

1. The first 1½ year, from Jul’19 to Dec’20, is very volatile. And that period also includes the Covid market crash. It is only after Jan’21 you start to see stable returns. 
2. PGIM India Midcap Fund starts off very impressive with highest return. And then has a dramatic decline starting from Jun’23 and now is even underperforming Franklin India Mid Cap Fund.
3. While Invesco India Mid Cap Fund is the topmost fund today, it wasn’t always the case. It was in the middle till around Oct’23. Since then it has slowly moved up and  now holds the top spot.
4. Franklin India Mid Cap Fund moved from last place to the middle of the rankings and before declining again as of Jul’26.