Top 5 ETFs in India to invest in 2024 using SIP

These top 5 ETF SIP can provide an alternate strategy to invest in Low cost instruments compared to Mutual Funds

by admin Updated: 09 Jan, 2024, 17:30 IST
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If you are one of the savvy Investors, you would have realised by now that Mutual funds are not always “Sahi hain” due to inherent costs and almost on-par performance with the Market indices over the years.

The SPIVA India Scorecard (PDF Link) which compares the performance of actively managed Indian mutual funds with their respective benchmark indices over 1-, 3-, 5-, and 10-year investment horizons had some interesting results in June 2020 - Over the longer horizon of 10-year period ending June 2020, 67.67 percent of the actively managed large cap equity funds in India underperformed the large cap benchmark.

Top 5 ETFs in India to invest in 2024 using SIP

(Source: SPIVA India & MoneyControl)

If you are time-strapped for doing direct equity investments or research related to direct equity investments, which most retail investors usually are, Exchange Traded Funds or ETFs are one of the good instruments to consider. They have grown tremendously in popularity over time due to lower fees and expenses compared to Mutual funds. 

What are ETFs and why are they growing in popularity?

ETF or Exchange Traded Funds is a type of Investment that simply replicates an underlying index or commodity. Since they are usually not actively managed by a Fund Manager, the fees and expenses are usually quite low compared to a Mutual Fund.

ETFs are actively traded on a stock exchange (just like shares of any company) and can be freely purchased and sold using your brokerage account like Zerodha or Upstox. ETFs do not have any minimum holding period or any lock-in period. Even from a taxation perspective, one simply has to pay tax when ETFs are sold and a profit is booked on the same (just like equity stocks).


Why SIP in ETF?

Just like SIP in Mutual Funds, One can create or plan a SIP in ETF as it allows you to systematically invest in quality companies without having to do much research on Individual scripts on monthly basis. Since ETF usually has either a reputed Fund Manager or tracks some commodity like Gold, SIP allows you to invest money over longer time horizon without worrying about ups and downs of overall market or sector or even about macro-economics. However, just like Mutual funds, they are also subject to market risks and there is no guarantee that past performance would be repeated. It can also under-perform or over-perform based on overall equity market.

Setting up a SIP for such ETF is very straightforward in most Brokerage account. Here is one such example from Zerodha.

While there are multiple ETFs available on NSE, We have shortlisted the top 5 ETF according to us, which one can consider for investors who do not want to put money in actively-managed equity schemes. We have also picked one International Exposure ETF along with Gold ETF to help you diversify your risks geographically. 

1. Nippon India ETF Bank BeES

As the name suggests this ETF mainly invests in shares of Banks and Financial Services listed on NSE. It has decent exposure to both Private as well as PSU banks. While one can try to cherry-pick top banks like HDFC Bank, ICICI Bank, SBI, IDFC First Bank etc, This ETF would provide a decent portfolio exposure to Leading banks in India. As more and more millennials gets access to banking in Tier - II and Tier III cities, One can easily allocate 10-20% of their ETF Portfolio to Banks.

The ETF holds the following 10 banks as their top holdings.

Name of the Bank Market Cap % of Total Holding
HDFC Bank 870,323.67 26.89%
ICICI Bank 431,873.02 20.01%
Axis Bank Ltd 230,847.67 16.59%
Kotak Mahindra Bank Ltd 374,546.33 13.55%
State Bank of India 362,651.59 10.93%
IndusInd Bank Ltd 84,196.60 4.85%
Bandhan Bank Ltd 57,465.61 2.11%
Federal Bank Ltd 16,936.59 1.46%
IDFC First Bank Ltd 38,012.74 1.00%
RBL Bank Ltd 14,769.90 0.97%

A monthly SIP in such ETF over last 10 years would have given you >15% Annualised Returns.

Investment Period Rs. 10K SIP Starting Investment Value Current Value Absolute Returns Annualised Returns
1 Year 1st March 2020 Rs. 1,20,000 Rs. 1,79,184.12 49.32% 102.98%
3 Years 1st March 2018 Rs. 3,60,000 Rs. 4,80,334.35 33.39% 19.67%
5 Years 1st March 2016 Rs. 6,00,000 Rs. 8,92,911.97 48.82% 15.91%
10 Years 1st March 2011 Rs. 12,00,000 Rs. 26,36,671.2 119.72% 15.04%

2. Nippon India ETF Junior BeES

This ETF is more than 10 Years old and has expense ratio of 0.15% and Zero Exit Load. Launched on 21st Feb 2003 and managed by Vishal Jain, The fund has Assets under Management (AUM) of Rs. 1,408 Cr. It closely corresponds to returns of Equity shares of Nifty Next 50 Index. One can give an ETF exposure of 15% to 25% based on risk capacity.

This Fund has 68% investment in large cap stocks, 26.1% in mid cap stocks and 4.9% in small cap stocks.

The ETF holds the following top 5 stocks as their top holdings.

Name of the Stock Market Cap % of Total Holding
Avenue Supermarts (Retail) 199,346 4.44%
Adani Green Energy (Power) 181,824 4.42%
Tata Consumer Products Ltd (FMCG, Retail) 58,187 3.77%
Info Edge (India) Ltd (IT Services) 63,965 3.72%
Dabur India Ltd (Personal Care) 90,324 3.27%

It also has many other quality companies like ICICI General Insurance, Godrej Consumer, Havells etc.

A monthly SIP in such ETF over last 10 years would have given you 14.32% Annualised Returns.

Investment Period Rs. 10K SIP Starting Investment Value Current Value Absolute Returns Annualised Returns
1 Year 1st March 2020 Rs. 1,20,000 Rs. 1,57,841.91 31.53% 63.53%
3 Years 1st March 2018 Rs. 3,60,000 Rs. 4,63,684 28.8% 17.16%
5 Years 1st March 2016 Rs. 6,00,000 Rs. 8,27,613.9 37.94% 12.83%
10 Years 1st March 2011 Rs. 12,00,000 Rs. 25,36,579.2 111.38% 14.32%

3. Motilal Oswal Nasdaq 100 ETF (MOSt Shares NASDAQ 100)

This Fund mainly invest in shares of US Equity companies like Apple, Tesla, Microsoft, Amazon, Google, Netflix, PayPal, Nvidia and is a great way to diversify your ETF portfolio geographically. Indian Investors often struggle to invest in Giant Tech companies we use everyday and this ETF solves that puzzle by being a Rupee denominated Investment and also for Individual investor, It does not fall under the 250k$ foreign investment cap. It has low expense ratio of 0.5% per annum and there is no entry/exit Load.

Taxed as "investment other than equity oriented fund" (i.e. debt taxation with/without indexation benefits), Retail investors are taxed at a flat rate of 20% after indexation if sold after 3 years.

One can consider investing 15-25% of their ETF Portfolio based on their Risk apetite.

The ETF has some of the most renowned names globally within its top 10 stocks 

Name of the Company Market Cap ($) % of Total Holding
Apple 2,169,247,980,800 12.14%
Microsoft Corp 1,763,898,001,428 9.49%
Amazon.com 1,558,296,204,156 8.74%
Tesla Motors Inc 658,881,839,286 5.03%
Facebook 737,707,801,789 3.36%
Alphabet Inc - Class C 1,399,399,854,674 3.29%
Alphabet Inc 1,391,741,662,159 2.97%
NVIDIA Corporation 332,475,000,000 2.65%
Paypal Holdings Inc 315,268,802,834 2.26%
Netflix 242,626,881,881 1.93%

A monthly SIP in such ETF over last 10 years would have given you a massive >25% Annualised Returns.

Investment Period Rs. 10K SIP Starting Investment Value Current Value Absolute Returns Annualised Returns
1 Year 1st March 2020 Rs. 1,20,000 Rs. 1,48,166 23.47% 46.33%
3 Years 1st March 2018 Rs. 3,60,000 Rs. 5,94,352 65.1% 35.45%
5 Years 1st March 2016 Rs. 6,00,000 Rs. 12,50,242 108.2% 29.88%
10 Years 1st March 2011 Rs. 12,00,000 Rs. 45,25,150 277.1% 25.07%

4. Nippon India ETF Nifty BeES

As the Name already suggests, this ETF mainly invest in Large cap companies in India and is a great way to beat Inflation and add stability to the ETF portfolio. While the annualised returns of this ETF are generally lower than JuniorBees, the risk is also comparatively lower due to some prominent Indian companies it holds.

Conversative Investors can allocate around 25% of their ETF portfolio in the above ETF while aggressive investors can allocate around 15%.

The ETF has some of the most renowned names within its top 10 stocks 

Name of the Company Market Cap (Cr) % of Total Holding
HDFC Bank Ltd 874,263.90 10.28%
Reliance Industries Ltd 1,418,791.53 10.12%
Infosys Ltd 572,358 7.8%
HDFC Ltd 478,309.93 7.26%
ICICI Bank 436,816.02 6.30%
Tata Consultancy Servies 1,147,723.15 5.55%
Kotak Mahindra Bank 376,250.53 4.26%
Hindustan Unilever 515,516.14 3.43%
ITC Ltd 258,342.19 3.02%
Axis Bank Ltd 376,250.53 2.79%

A monthly SIP in such ETF over last 10 years would have given you a modest but stable annualised returns of 13.68%.

Investment Period Rs. 10K SIP Starting Investment Value Current Value Absolute Returns Annualised Returns
1 Year 1st March 2020 Rs. 1,20,000 Rs. 1,62,320 35.27% 71.61%
3 Years 1st March 2018 Rs. 3,60,000 Rs. 4,89,255.7 35.9% 20.99%
5 Years 1st March 2016 Rs. 6,00,000 Rs. 9,07,165 51.19% 16.56%
10 Years 1st March 2011 Rs. 12,00,000 Rs. 24,50,844 104.24% 13.68%

5. Nippon India ETF Gold BeES

While the Yellow Metal continues to lose its shine after dropping around Rs. 11,000 from August 2020's High, Its also a great investment opportunities as Investors turn fearful of yellow metal's slide. Gold BeEs provides returns that are closely in line with returns of Physical Gold. One can also consider Sovereign Gold Bond Scheme offered by the Government of India or even invest in Physical Gold and avoid this ETF completely.

One can consider an exposure of around 10% to 15% in Gold BeEs out of their overall ETF portfolio. Gold can help you with returns similar or better to Fixed Deposit but with overall weakness in Gold over last 6 months, this ETF can turn out to be a good contrarian bet.

Investment Period Rs. 10K SIP Starting Investment Value Current Value Absolute Returns Annualised Returns
1 Year 1st March 2020 Rs. 1,20,000 Rs. 1,11,726 -6.89% -12.58%
3 Years 1st March 2018 Rs. 3,60,000 Rs. 4,33,886 20.52% 12.51%
5 Years 1st March 2016 Rs. 6,00,000 Rs. 7,85,427 30.9% 10.72%
10 Years 1st March 2011 Rs. 12,00,000 Rs. 17,14,161

42.85%

6.93%

We hope that this gives you some understanding on how one can diversify their ETF portfolio and create an alternate investment strategy to Mutual Funds. There are obviously multiple ETFs tracking Sensex and Nifty which can be evaluated.

Do you invest in ETFs? Feel free to share your thoughts and comments on the same.

31 Comments  |  
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Spearhead Spearhead
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Post Emperor Post Emperor
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How to do sip in these like mfs using upstox

Helpful Helpful
Admin
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As far as am aware, Upstox does not have Stock SIP option like Zerodha etc. You can probably use smallcase to setup SIP but there might be some additional fees linked with Smallcase.

https://upstox.com/market-talk/smallcase-buildi...

Deal Newbie Deal Newbie
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Good information.thanks

Investor Guru Investor Guru
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ETFs vs Index Funds
Well, Index Fund is an Umbrella term. Index Funds replicates an underlying index, that’s why less workforce is needed and expense ratio is cheaper compared to actively managed funds. Actively managed funds always consider one index as a benchmark index and they just try to beat the performance of the index. And Index Funds try to track the index. And like other systems, this system is not also error free. We call em tracking error. More info regarding tracking error will be found in https://www.investopedia.com/terms/t/trackinger...

There are multiple types Index Funds. One kind are plain old vanilla mutual funds. Yes, there are many fund houses have Index Funds in their arsenal. One can subscribe them/invest in them by visiting the respective fund houses/mutual fund platforms like Groww, Kuber, Coin, Fundsindia etc/agents(these days advisors can’t sell and sellers can’t advise). Another kind comes in form of ETFs or so called Exchange Traded Funds. Index Fund ETFs can only be purchased if one has a Trading cum Demat account.

The term ETF is itself an umbrella term for its own niche segment. It includes Index ETFs ex NIFTYBEES, Commodity ETFs ex GOLDBEES, Actively managed ETFs (Sounds contradictory but yes they exist. https://www.investopedia.com/terms/a/actively-m...) but they don’t exist in India sadly but https://etfdb.com/themes/actively-managed...s/ will give a list of em. In India there are two kind of ETFs, IndexETFs and GoldETFs. Well that’s technically wrong, there are LIQUIDBEEs and LIQUIDETF by DSP (There is nothing liquid about it though, very low volume thing, stick to LIQUIDBEEs only), https://support.zerodha.com/tickets/20210310292...

Along with the ETFs shared above, there are couple of other noteworthy ETFs. Ex: LIQUIDBEES (again from Nippon India Mutual Fund, very liquid and it is called cash equivalent. 90% margin is given when pledged with just 10% haircut) https://support.zerodha.com/category/trading-an... is a very good article on it, SHARIABEES (Shariah compliant securities are listed only, derived from Nifty 50 index. Constituents are Infosys Ltd (26.88%), Tata Consultancy Services Ltd. (7.60%), Hindustan Unilever Ltd. (11.02%), Asian Paints Ltd. (5.94%), HCL Technologies Ltd. (5.71%), Titan Company Ltd. (3.40%), Nestle India Ltd. (3.32%), Tech Mahindra Ltd. (3.29%), Dr. Reddy’s Laboratories Ltd. (3.11%), Grasim Industries Ltd. (2.70%) https://www1.nseindia.com/content/indices/Facts... will give more detailed info. Warning very Iliquid) etc.

Top ETFs with most volume as per today’s info (10th March 2021) are GOLDBEES (52,86,384), CPSEETF, NETFIT, NIFTYBEES, HDFCMFGETF, ICICIGOLD, LIQUIDBEES data collected from https://www.nseindia.com/market-data/exchange-t... (It changes everyday).

Pros and Cons of ETFs
Pros:
1) ADD/EXIT in Market Hour: We can buy at market price. Index crashed. You need to invest. What to do? You buy ETFs of your choice. And some how we can anticipate a crash, what to do? We sell. In mutual funds there are a lot of obstacles. Ex: https://www.moneycontrol.com/news/business/npci...
2) Immediately Reinvested Dividends
https://www.investopedia.com/articles/exchanget...

Cons
1) Brokerage, taxes and AMC BSDA guidelines allows BSDA (Basic Services DEMAT Account) holders to pay 0 as AMC if holding value lies below 50k INR, 100INR if holding value lies in between 50k and 2lakh INR. Above that threshold BSDA holder needs to pay AMC as per broker’s discretion(https://www.sebi.gov.in/media/press-releases/au...). In this aspect normal mutual funds become very efficient. Long term returns are almost comparable to ETF n non ETF Index Funds. If portfolio is in negatives, it just pains to pay taxes, brokerage and AMCs etc.
2) Speculative Trades As the asset can be liquidated quite easily, one might not be able to contain ones’ emotion. That will incur losses.
3) Necessity of having min two accounts so no BSDA benefits and more expenses One acc will be for speculative trading and other will be for investments. That’s okay for stock holding. I am not sure for investment in mutual funds.
4) Brokerage House Defaults That’s like being on edge 24X7, which we avoided by being into mutual funds in the first place.

🙂🙂🙂🙂

Deal Cadet Deal Cadet
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Thank you, very informative. Can you explain the difference between index funds and passive funds? Are index funds a type of passive funds? If so, what are the other type of passive funds?

Also, what does the ‘BeES’ in some ETF names stand for?

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Deal Newbie Deal Newbie
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How to find them on zerodha

Investor Guru Investor Guru
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Type them. 🙂🙂🙂

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Helpful Helpful
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Going with nifty bees

Deal Newbie Deal Newbie
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Will smallcase correct platform for sip on etf?
Will I be getting compound interest if i stopped investing after 5 years?

Deal Newbie Deal Newbie
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???

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Deal Newbie Deal Newbie
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Nice information and strategy

Deal Subedar Deal Subedar
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Do you need to go through Zerodha only to invest in these SIPs????
Cant we buy these directly from HDFC or AXIS etc?

Deal Cadet Deal Cadet
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This was extremely informative and I appreciate the time you took to articulate everything.
Could you please suggest as to how and where can we invest 6-8k per month apart from PPF or lics ?

Commentator Commentator
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Can we expect any difference in returns from etf Vs index eg any nifty 50 index fund Vs niftybees on sip mode?

Investor Guru Investor Guru
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Sorry for late reply.
Bhai, we can do it for past performance. 🙂🙂🙂

Post Tycoon Post Tycoon
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Do not go for Gold bees and Bank Bees, other three are good.

Helpful Helpful
Admin
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It’s good for balancing… If stock market comes crashing down or equity bear market comes in, Gold can provide you stability to your ETF portfolio during those times.

But yes, every investor may have different Risk Apetite. smile

Deal Newbie Deal Newbie
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What about dividend, bonus or split , do we get these benefits while holding such a company under etf???

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Deal Newbie Deal Newbie
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NETFIT FOR IT investment…

Benevolent Benevolent
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is there any spiva report of how index funds perform with respect to the index in the long run? @admin @bikidas2060

Deal Newbie Deal Newbie
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Doesn’t etfs have brokerage associated with them? Even though the expense ratio is bit low but you are still paying more. Some funds are also available at the cost of etf.
Also considering that you will be buying etf at market price which varies. Usually is expensive compared to nav. For some the % difference is quite high to justify shifting to them.

Like Magnet Like Magnet
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Sip in ETF using shoonya app of finvasia ?

Deal Newbie Deal Newbie
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They have been boasting in SIP’s ,but real scenario,No body attain that much profits on regular years. If one can caliculate by taking 5 years tenure.One can get only 2-3 % only.

replyuser
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