₹10,000 a Month for 20, 10 and 5 Years: What Staying With a SIP Was Worth

The figures below use the real daily NAVs of three funds, regular plan, growth option: Franklin India Large Cap, UTI Mid Cap and Nippon India Small Cap. Each SIP buys ₹10,000 of units on the first NAV date of every month and is valued at the NAV of 23 October 2026. Returns are XIRR, the annual rate that accounts for when each instalment went in. How the funds were picked, and why the small cap fund covers 16 years rather than 20, is at the end.

₹10,000 a month became ₹75.9 lakh to ₹1.33 crore over 20 years, and ₹6.6 lakh to ₹7.7 lakh over 5

The liquid fund row is the cautious alternative: the same instalments in a fund that almost never falls. Over 20 years the large cap fund turned ₹23.8 lakh into ₹27.7 lakh more than the liquid fund did, and the mid cap fund into ₹85.1 lakh more. Over 5 years the large cap fund is ₹24,647 behind it.

Every 20-year SIP lost a third or more before it made anything

Checked on each instalment date. The 2008 SIPs were back above cost within six months of the December 2008 low, because a SIP that has only just started has little money in it, and the cheap instalments bought at the bottom pull the average cost down fast. The small cap SIP started after 2008 and was hit by the 2011 fall instead. It took three years to stay above water.

Most of the money arrived in the last five years

What each SIP was worth at the five-year marks:

After five years the large cap SIP was ₹1.5 lakh ahead of the money paid in. Since the fifteen-year mark, less than five years ago, it has added ₹24.8 lakh, more than its whole value at ten years. The mid cap SIP added ₹51.0 lakh in the same stretch. Anyone who judged the SIP at year five was judging it on its smallest number.

Stopping at the first 10% loss cost ₹22 lakh in large cap and over ₹70 lakh in mid and small cap

The second investor in each pair is not reckless. They stop paying into the fund the first month the SIP is 10% below cost, keep the units they hold, and put the same ₹10,000 into a liquid fund every month from then on. Both investors pay in the same money.

• Large cap, kept paying for 20 years₹75.9 L
• Large cap, stopped in July 2008 and saved the rest in a liquid fund₹53.6 L₹22.2 lakh less, from the same ₹23.8 lakh.
• Mid cap, kept paying for 20 years₹1.33 Cr
• Mid cap, stopped in April 2007 and saved the rest in a liquid fund₹52.0 L₹81.3 lakh less. It stopped after four instalments.
• Small cap, kept paying for 16 years₹1.28 Cr
• Small cap, stopped in December 2011 and saved the rest in a liquid fund₹55.3 L₹72.7 lakh less, from the same ₹19.3 lakh.

The stopper keeps the fund units bought before the stop and puts every later instalment in HDFC Liquid Fund. Mid cap funds fell more than 10% in early 2007, so the mid cap stopper quit after four instalments.

Check a real fund's SIP returns →

Over 10 years the picture is less one-sided. A large cap stopper who quit in April 2020, at the COVID low, ends ₹58,165 behind, because the large cap fund earned 9.2% against the liquid fund's 6.0% and the gap had only six years to work. The mid cap stopper of August 2019 is ₹3.0 lakh behind and the small cap stopper ₹7.3 lakh. Staying put paid most where the fund swung most, and over the longest time.

Five years was not long enough: the large cap fund and the Nifty trailed a liquid fund

A SIP started in January 2022 has run into two falls: the 2022 correction and the fall that took the Nifty 15.6% below its January 2026 peak by 8 October. The large cap SIP has returned 5.1% a year and the Nifty index fund 3.9%, both below the liquid fund's 6.6%. The mid cap SIP is only ₹9,006 ahead of it.

That is not a reason to stop. The 10-year SIPs were 25% to 31% below cost in April 2020 and are now well ahead. It is a reason not to put money you need within five years into an equity fund, which the falling-market post covers in detail.

A 10% yearly step-up made the corpus 1.5 to 2 times bigger, because you paid in 2.3 to 2.8 times as much

The step-up does not earn a better return. Its XIRR is slightly lower, 10.2% against 10.6% in the large cap fund, because the larger instalments come late and have less time to grow. What it does is match the SIP to a salary that rises. By year 20 the instalment is about ₹61,200 a month. The SIP planning guide prices the step-up with a 12% assumption. These are the real-fund versions.

Keeping cash aside to buy crashes roughly tied with just investing it

The tempting alternative to a plain SIP: invest ₹10,000 a month, keep another ₹2,000 a month in a liquid fund, and move all of that cash into the equity fund whenever the fund is 20% or more below its high. Compare it with simply running a ₹12,000 SIP. Same money, different timing.

• Large cap: ₹12,000 SIP₹91.0 L
• Large cap: ₹10,000 SIP and ₹2,000 kept for falls₹93.7 L₹2.7 lakh more, 2.9%. The one case where waiting for falls helped.
• Mid cap: ₹12,000 SIP₹1.60 Cr
• Mid cap: ₹10,000 SIP and ₹2,000 kept for falls₹1.59 Cr₹86,111 less.
• Small cap: ₹12,000 SIP, 16 years₹1.54 Cr
• Small cap: ₹10,000 SIP and ₹2,000 kept for falls, 16 years₹1.53 Cr₹56,343 less.

The reserve is checked on each instalment date and moved in full whenever the fund's NAV is 20% or more below its highest since the SIP began. Any cash still waiting on 23 October 2026 is counted at its liquid fund value.

In the large cap fund the reserve came out ₹2.7 lakh ahead, mostly from ₹3.9 lakh that had built up by April 2020 and went in at the COVID low. In the mid and small cap funds it came out slightly behind. Those funds fall 20% often enough that the cash rarely waited long, so it behaved like a ₹12,000 SIP that ran a few months late. Over 10 years the large cap reserve was 3.5% ahead, the mid cap one 0.4% ahead and the small cap one 1.0% behind.

Buying more in a crash helps a little, sometimes. Keeping the SIP running through the crash, as the stoppers above did not, is worth many times more.

How the funds were chosen

The large and mid cap funds were picked by a rule, not by results. AMFI lists 10 large cap and 11 mid cap funds whose regular plans have NAVs from before January 2007. Each was run through the same 20-year SIP, and the fund in the middle of its group was chosen. The ranges, by 20-year SIP XIRR:

• Large cap, 10 funds: 9.2% (JM Large Cap) to 11.9% (Aditya Birla Sun Life Large Cap). Franklin India Large Cap, 10.6%, sits sixth.
• Mid cap, 10 funds: 13.6% (Taurus Mid Cap) to 15.8% (Nippon India Growth Mid Cap). UTI Mid Cap, 15.3%, sits fifth.

Small cap could not be done the same way. None of the small cap funds old enough was an open small cap fund in 2007: Franklin India Smaller Companies was closed-ended until January 2011, and Kotak Small Cap was Kotak Mid-Cap until May 2018. Nippon India Small Cap, launched in September 2010, has the longest clean record, so it covers 16 years instead of 20. It has also been one of the best small cap funds of that period. Over 10 years the four small cap funds with a full record returned 14.7% to 19.1%, and Nippon is the 19.1%. Read its numbers as a good outcome, not a typical one.

Quant Mid Cap and Quant Small Cap are left out. Their NAVs before 2019 come from older Escorts Mutual Fund schemes with different mandates, and include one-day jumps of nearly 200% that are not real returns.

All funds are regular plans, which pay a distributor commission out of the NAV, because direct plans only started in January 2013. A direct plan of the same fund would show higher figures. Funds that closed or merged before today are not in the list at all, which flatters every average a little.

Check any fund over your own dates with the periodic return calculator, and plan the monthly amount with the SIP calculator.

Frequently asked questions

Should I buy these three funds? This site does not make recommendations, and nothing on this page is one. The large and mid cap funds were chosen for being average in their group over 20 years, which says little about the next 20. The index fund guide covers the option that needs no fund picking: the Nifty 50 index fund here returned 10.4%, within 0.2 points of the middle large cap fund.

Why does the small cap fund return so much more than the mid cap fund? Partly the period and partly the fund. It started in October 2010, after the 2008 crash, and the 2020 to 2024 small cap rally falls inside it. And it is the best of the four small cap funds with a 10-year record. The three small cap funds with a 20-year record, two of which were closed-ended or mid cap funds for part of that time, returned 15.3% to 16.6%, close to the mid cap funds.

Is a 10% fall the right point to test stopping? It is where many people first feel they should do something. Stopping later, at a 20% or 30% loss, means buying more units before the stop, but the investor still misses the cheapest months and the recovery that follows. The falling-market post tests pausing and restarting across nine Nifty falls since 2008.

Where do these figures come from? Daily NAVs from AMFI via mfapi.in, from April 2006 to 23 October 2026. SIP instalments are bought on the first NAV date of each month. HDFC Liquid Fund's units were consolidated from ₹10 to ₹1,000 face value in August 2015, and its earlier NAVs are scaled to match. Returns are XIRR, the same measure the periodic return calculator uses.