Who sells India’s mutual funds?

The overall split

Of ₹74.72 lakh crore of average AUM outside ETFs in Jul 2026, 44.4% sat in direct plans, 6.9% came through distributors in the fund house's own sponsor group and 48.8% through other distributors. Counting ETFs, which have no separate plans and 13.5% of all assets, the direct share reads 48.8%.

Who goes direct

Corporates hold 63.1% of their equity and hybrid money in direct plans. Individuals are the distributors' business, and that is where the change is: retail investors went from 8.1% direct in Mar 2014 to 28.6%, HNIs from 5.3% to 25.2%. Retail investors are now more likely than HNIs to be in direct plans.

Big cities and the rest

Investors beyond AMFI's top 15 cities hold 28.8% of individuals' equity and hybrid assets. They were furthest behind in Feb 2018, 5.0 points below the top 15 cities. The gap is now 0.4 points, close to none.

By fund category

AMFI's quarterly scheme-wise data shows each SEBI category. In the quarter to 30 Sept 2026, money market funds were 85% direct and dividend yield funds 11%.

What distribution costs

A regular plan charges more than the direct plan of the same scheme; the difference pays for distribution. Across all regular plans that came to about ₹31,697 crore in FY26 (2025-26) including GST (₹26,862 crore without it), up from ₹10,952 crore in FY19 (2018-19). FY27 so far, 2 quarters: ₹16,434 crore.

Which funds pay the most

Over the four quarters to 30 Sept 2026, sectoral and thematic funds produced the biggest bill, ₹4,378 crore or 13% of the total, on a gap of 1.10% a year.

What it cost in returns

The TER gap is the cost as charged. NAVs show it as paid: the same scheme's direct plan grows faster than its regular plan by the difference in expenses. Over the five years to 30 Sept 2026, equity schemes' direct plans grew 0.95 points a year faster, weighted by assets. Over ten years, ₹10 lakh in the median equity scheme became ₹33.4 lakh in the regular plan and ₹36.7 lakh in the direct plan; the median shortfall was ₹3.5 lakh.

Advised or do-it-yourself

Since January 2024 AMFI splits direct-plan money by how it came in. In Jul 2026, 83.1% was placed by investors themselves, 14.5% through SEBI-registered investment advisers, who charge a fee instead of a commission, and 2.4% through portfolio managers. The adviser share was 12.1% in Jan 2024.

Sponsor-group distributors

SEBI asks fund houses to show separately the money that comes through distributors in their own group, usually the sponsor bank. That channel carries 6.9% of non-ETF assets and 9.3% of individuals' equity and hybrid money. Separately, 1.6% of all assets is the sponsor group's own money invested in its schemes.

How the numbers are checked

Two AMFI reports measure the direct share independently: the monthly category-wise report and the quarterly scheme-wise one. With ETFs left out of both, they never differ by more than 2.2 percentage points in any quarter since 2014.

The distribution bill is an estimate of what investors pay, not of what distributors receive: fund houses pay commission out of the regular plan's higher TER, but can pay more or less than the gap. As a cross-check, AMFI's disclosure of commission paid to its 3,158 largest distributors totalled ₹21,106 crore for FY25, and press estimates for the whole industry are about ₹27,000 crore (Business Standard, Business Today). The estimate here for FY25 is ₹23,936 crore excluding GST.