Franklin India Taxshield is an ELSS fund with a mandate of investing across market caps, with a bottom up stock picking approach. The fund was launched in April 1999, and is being managed by Anand Radhakrishnan since April 2007. The fund manager is biased towards investing in Large-Cap stocks, which constitute around 70-75 per cent of the portfolio. He looks for companies with strong fundamentals as well as good growth prospects.

In terms of performance, the fund has consistently outperformed its category as well as its benchmark across all time periods. Since its inception, it has seen a CAGR of 25.91 per cent. The Large-Cap bias has helped the fund to do exceptionally well in the bear market of 2008, when the fund was down by 49 per cent as compared to a 56 per cent decline in the category average. In terms of risk-adjusted performance, the fund has been less volatile as compared to its peers as measured by the Standard Deviation of its returns. It has also generated better risk-adjusted returns as measured by its Sharpe ratio.

As regards its portfolio, the fund is well diversified across sectors and stocks, with around 50 stocks in its kitty. The fund follows a buy and hold strategy, having a low portfolio turnover ratio. Investors with a conservative-to-moderate risk appetite looking to invest money in an ELSS scheme can look at this fund.

Fact Sheet
AMC	Franklin Templeton Asset Management India Private Ltd
Structure	Equity - Tax Planning (ELSS)
Investment Option	Growth & Dividend
Exit load	Nil
Corpus	Rs 803.51 crore (30/09/11)
52 Weeks High/ Low	Rs 221.21 (03/01/11) / Rs 182.62 (20/12/11)
Minimum Investment	Rs 500
Benchmark	S&P CNX 500
Launch Date	April 1999
Fund Manager/s	Anand Radhakrishnan, Anil Prabhudas

Trailing returns (%) as on 23/12/2011
Time Frames	Fund	Category
Year-to-Date	-14.391	-22.97
1-Year	-13.35	-21.37
3-Year	24.02	18.6
5-Year	8.86	3.36
Returns up to 1 year are absolute and over 1 year are annualized

Top Five Holdings (% of Net Asset as on 31/10/11)
Infosys Technologies	7.93%
Bharti Airtel	7.68%
ICICI Bank	5.02%
Grasim Industries	4.07%
HDFC Bank	4.04%
Total of Ten Holdings	43.32%