"Top mutual fund india" is not a very helpful information if you consider it at any particular point in time. It is certainly natural to be comfortable that you are making the best choice while investing, but it is a group of mutual fund options that comprise the best pick and there wouldn't be much difference between them- their order changing from day to day.

If you are looking at top mutual fund companies or fund houses, you are actually looking at the aggregate picture which arises on totalling of all schemes of that company or fund house. This pecking order will be only meaningful for the size of money they are currently handling. But it is unlikely to be helpful for your decision making purpose.

If you are looking at investing in mutual funds for tax deduction, you will have to look for best Tax Funds or Equity Linked Savings Scheme which will get you the tax benefit. These funds could be looked at by size of funds or by the returns they are giving over a resonable period in the past- a year or three years or five years. Tax funds could also have different investment philosophy or styles and therefore expose you to different levels of risks as well as give you very different returns. For example there are tax funds which are index funds and so invest in exactly the companies which form the index at their composition percentages in the index. These funds would give you a return similar to index movements over the period barring very small tracking error difference. Some ELSS funds would be a general diversified equity funds and give higher returns exposing you to a higher risk. Yet others may be investing largely in small cap or midcap stocks and generate high returns by exposing you more to medium and small company stocks. You must keep these things in mind when you are choosing your best mutual fund option.

You may similarly be interested in investing in mutual funds which invest in bonds or fixed income investments or in government securities. It is important that you compare apples to apples and take note of finer variations within those categories in determining scheme merits.

Mutual fund investing requires a little more involvement than investing in bank fixed deposits or deposits at Post Office and the like. Looking at top mutual fund in India to decide on your investment could be a shortcut which may save your time now, but may have a cost in terms of inappropriate results unless you go deeper into categories and exact nature of funds you like and spend a little time to finalise your picks.

It is not a fact that a particular fund house will have all its schemes in various categories doing the very best nor does size ensure quality of performance. Similarly there is no absolute best or top pick across various categories or types of funds. You will find that best 5 or 10 funds on a date may be an entirely different set of schemes from a list of best 5 or 10 on another day. Mutual fund performance needs to be judged over a period and the roll of honour will vary; so it'd be better for you to pick out of a set of good funds in the category or type of funds you prefer. You will achieve similar results as you had sought to get when you originally looked for top mutual funds in India.

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