What is a mutual Fund Calculator?
Mutual fund units are allotted based on the Net Asset Value (NAV) on the day you invest — a ₹50,000 investment at a NAV of ₹50 buys exactly 1,000 units. As the NAV moves, so does the value of your holding, since your unit count stays fixed (outside of dividend reinvestment or further purchases).
This calculator works out how many units a lumpsum investment bought, what that holding is worth at a later NAV, and the resulting absolute and annualised return — useful for checking a folio statement or estimating an existing holding's performance by hand.
How units and returns are calculated
The absolute return is the simple percentage gain on your investment; the annualised (CAGR) return restates that gain as a compounded yearly rate, which is what makes returns comparable across investments held for different lengths of time.
Worked example
Invest ₹1,00,000 in a fund at a NAV of ₹50, and you’re allotted exactly 2,000 units (₹1,00,000 ÷ ₹50). If the NAV rises to ₹68 over the next 3 years, your holding is worth 2,000 × ₹68 = ₹1,36,000 — a gain of ₹36,000, or 36% in absolute terms. Restated as an annualised (CAGR) figure over the 3-year hold, that’s roughly 10.79% a year — the number that’s actually comparable to a different fund held for a different length of time.
Why NAV isn’t quite like a stock price
A fund’s NAV represents the per-unit value of everything the fund holds, calculated once a day after markets close — unlike a stock price, which moves continuously through the trading day. Buying more units when NAV is low and fewer when it’s high (which happens automatically with a SIP, and happens once, at whatever NAV applies that day, with a lumpsum) is the entire basis of the rupee-cost averaging discussed on the SIP Calculator page.
If you’ve been investing via SIP, not a single lumpsum
This tool assumes one purchase at one NAV. If you’ve built a holding through a SIP with a different NAV on every instalment date, there’s no single "purchase NAV" to enter here — use the XIRR Calculator instead, which correctly handles multiple purchase dates and amounts and gives you the annualised return across all of them.
Frequently asked questions
Where do I find my purchase NAV?
It’s on the allotment statement or capital gains statement your fund house (or an aggregator like CAMS/KFintech) sends after a purchase, and also visible in most broker or fund-house apps against each holding.
Does this handle SIP investments with multiple NAVs?
No — this assumes a single lumpsum purchase at one NAV. For a SIP with many purchase dates, use the XIRR Calculator, which handles irregular cash flows correctly.
Why is my annualised return different from the fund’s advertised CAGR?
A fund’s published CAGR is usually calculated from a fixed date (like fund launch), not from your personal purchase date — the two will only match if you invested on that same date.
What’s the difference between NAV and AUM?
NAV (Net Asset Value) is the per-unit price of the fund. AUM (Assets Under Management) is the total money the fund manages across all investors. A fund can have a high AUM and a low NAV, or vice versa — the two aren’t related to each other.
Does a higher NAV mean a more expensive or better fund?
No — this is one of the most common misconceptions carried over from stock investing. A fund’s NAV level says nothing about its quality or future returns; a ₹10 NAV fund and a ₹500 NAV fund can deliver identical percentage returns going forward. What matters is the fund’s track record, portfolio, and expense ratio, not the NAV number itself.
Do dividend/IDCW payouts affect this calculation?
This calculator assumes the growth option, where gains stay invested and compound into the NAV. Under an IDCW (payout) option, some gains are paid out periodically instead, which lowers the NAV compared to the growth option — that payout isn’t captured in this NAV-based calculation, so growth-option NAVs and IDCW-option NAVs of the same underlying fund shouldn’t be compared directly.
Can I use this for ETFs or index funds?
Yes — the same units-times-NAV mechanic applies to ETFs and index funds, though ETFs technically trade at a market price on an exchange that can vary slightly from their published NAV, unlike a regular open-ended mutual fund.