India’s mutual-funds leaderboard just underwent a regrouping, and for Tata Mutual Fund, it is a comeback of sorts.

Earlier in August, the Mumbai-based firm, backed by the Tata group, managed to claw its way back into the country’s top 10 fund houses by assets under management (AUM)—after nearly a decade and a half. With an AUM of nearly Rs 2.16 lakh crore as of July-end, Tata MF has pipped its closest rivals, DSP Mutual Fund and Mirae Asset Mutual Fund, if only barely.

For a fund house that was long entangled in its own web—including being constrained by the “Tata culture”, dealing with ghosts of the past, and facing frequent management changes—breaking into the top 10 is a big deal. It’s the kind of milestone that would have called for celebration.

Yet, there’s little to cheer about.

Tata MF, despite its pedigree, hasn’t been able to scale up like its peers. The five largest fund houses in India—SBI, ICICI, HDFC, Nippon, and Kotak, most of them born around the same time as Tata MF in the mid-1990s—now command AUMs worth Rs 5–11 lakh crore. Even Mirae Asset MF, which was set up in 2008, was racing aheadThe KenWhat Mirae did in India that Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan couldn’t until recently.

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