Aditya Birla Sun Life Small Cap Fund - Growth vs SBI Nifty Smallcap 250 Index Fund

Aditya Birla Sun Life Small Cap Fund - Growth is an actively managed small cap fund scheme: a fund manager picks and weights the holdings, and charges a higher expense ratio for doing so. SBI Nifty Smallcap 250 Index Fund does the opposite — it simply tracks NIFTY Smallcap 250 and charges very little. This page settles the question that actually matters before you invest in either: over the periods we can measure, did the active fund earn its fee?

Both sides are compared on their official AMFI NAV history (direct plan, growth option) — the same daily data the fund houses publish. Using the index fund rather than the raw NIFTY Smallcap 250 level is deliberate: a tracking fund's NAV already includes its expense ratio and tracking error, so this is the return an investor could genuinely have captured, not a theoretical index number nobody can buy.

Over the 3-year period Aditya Birla Sun Life Small Cap Fund - Growth beat its benchmark tracker: +19.34% annualised against +17.97% for SBI Nifty Smallcap 250 Index Fund — an outperformance of about 1.37 percentage points a year. That is the active manager genuinely adding value over this window, after the fund's own costs.

In rupee terms, ₹1,00,000 invested 3 years ago would have become about ₹1,69,969 in Aditya Birla Sun Life Small Cap Fund - Growth and ₹1,64,176 in SBI Nifty Smallcap 250 Index Fund — a difference of roughly ₹5,794 on a ₹1,00,000 investment. Scale that to the size of your actual SIP or lumpsum to see what the choice is worth to you.

The outperformance is consistent rather than a one-off: Aditya Birla Sun Life Small Cap Fund - Growth is ahead on every horizon we can measure (3-year: +19.34% vs +17.97% · 1-year: +13.30% vs +5.35%). Consistency across multiple periods is a stronger signal than a single good year, though it still does not guarantee the pattern continues.

On risk the two have behaved similarly over the trailing year — annualised volatility of 16.5% for Aditya Birla Sun Life Small Cap Fund - Growth against 17.1% for SBI Nifty Smallcap 250 Index Fund. On worst falls, the deepest drawdown in our stored history is −26.2% for Aditya Birla Sun Life Small Cap Fund - Growth against −26.2% for SBI Nifty Smallcap 250 Index Fund.

One factor sits outside the returns above: cost. An index fund tracking NIFTY Smallcap 250 typically charges a fraction of what an actively managed small cap fund scheme does, and that difference is deducted every year whether the manager performs or not. Over a long holding period a persistent fee gap compounds into a meaningful sum, which is why an active fund needs to beat its benchmark by more than its extra cost simply to break even with the tracker.

Which to choose comes down to what you believe about the next decade rather than the last one. Index funds guarantee you the benchmark's return minus a small fee; active funds offer the possibility of more, with the risk of less and a higher certain cost. Use the growth chart above to see how each behaved through actual market cycles, and consider a SEBI-registered adviser before switching. This comparison is informational and is not investment advice.