Study on Comparison of Investment Performance of Equity Linked Saving Scheme Plans (ELSS) and Diversified Equity Funds (DEF) of Indian Mutual Funds

The main attractions of mutual funds are high returns and short lock-in periods. The aim of the research is to compare the investment performance of Equity Linked Savings Scheme Mutual Funds (ELSS Growth plans) and Diversified Equity Mutual Funds (DEMF Growth plans) by using various indicators such as NAV, Book Value, Absolute Returns, SIP, CAGR, Standard Deviation, and Coefficient of Variance. The study considered a sample set of 27 ELSS funds, 12 Diversified Funds and 6 Market Indexes that were operational, which continued its business in the fund market from 01/04/2009 to 31/03/2021. The study has applied the Aspin-Welch-Satterthwaite t-test or Welch’s t-test to test the difference between two independent groups’ means with unequal variances and sample sizes. The results of Welch’s t-test suggest that the difference in the average of indicators (NAV, Book Value, Absolute Returns, SIP, CAGR, Standard Deviation and coefficient of variance) of ELSS funds and Diversified Equity funds are not statistically significant as their significance values were reported to be greater than 0.05.