The UTI Nifty 50 Index Fund has outperformed peers in its category, delivering a 7.8% three-year CAGR. With an AUM of ₹28,685 crore, it remains a significant player, though it continues to trail its benchmark index performance slightly.
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The UTI Nifty 50 Index Fund has emerged as the leading scheme among Nifty index mutual funds over a three-year period, according to data from ACE MF as of July 27, 2026. The fund recorded a compound annual growth rate of 7.8%, placing it just ahead of the Navi Nifty 50 Index Fund and HDFC Nifty 50 Index Fund, which both reported 7.7% returns for the same timeframe.
This performance ranking is restricted to schemes that manage at least ₹1,500 crore in assets. Within this group, the UTI Nifty 50 Index Fund stands out for its scale, currently managing a corpus of ₹28,685.1 crore. This makes it one of the largest funds in the category, a factor that often influences operational costs and liquidity management for index funds.
While the fund leads its peer group, it is important for investors to note that index funds generally aim to replicate, rather than beat, their benchmark. Over the three-year period, the UTI Nifty 50 Index Fund trailed its benchmark index by 0.4 percentage points, as the benchmark yielded 8.2%. A similar performance gap exists over the one-year timeframe, where the fund delivered -2.6% against the benchmark return of -2.3%, resulting in an underperformance of 0.3 percentage points.
In the shorter term, the fund has shown resilience within a challenging market environment. It registered a return of -0.1% over the past month and a gain of 0.2% over the last three months, holding the top position among its peers for both periods. However, for the six-month period ending in July, the fund posted a decline of 4.1%.
For investors, the primary monitorable in an index fund remains the tracking error, which measures how closely the fund’s performance follows the Nifty 50 index. While a fund may be a top performer compared to its peers, the ability to minimize the gap between its returns and the benchmark index is the standard measure of efficiency for passive investment vehicles. Investors should continue to track the expense ratio and tracking error in future disclosures to assess how these factors influence the fund's net returns relative to the underlying index.