Three rules. The starter strategy is the worst window you would still keep adding rupees into.
The brochure ranks by CAGR. The bank account ranks by what you held through. Three checks before the first SIP click. None of them ask what the strategy earned last year.
01
Define conservative by max drawdown, not by name.
A card labelled "Hybrid" or "Largecap" can still print a 25 percent drawdown. A 17 percent drawdown card with a higher CAGR can be the genuinely conservative pick. The honest filter is the deepest peak to trough on the strategy across the longest window it has run, in the rupee number you would actually have to sit with on your corpus, not the percent on a slide.
02
Take the behavioural test before the brochure test.
Stated tolerance overestimates revealed tolerance by roughly two to one across the literature since Roszkowski and Davey 2010. The 28 question dual axis wizard exists because the five slider version flatters everyone into Moderate and almost no one is Moderate. Capacity is the math. Tolerance is the nerve. The honest profile is the lower of the two, never the average.
03
Match the strategy to the worst window you would still SIP through.
A cancelled SIP at minus 15 earns the drawdown and misses the recovery. That is the 2.9 percentage point Dalbar gap in one sentence. The test is not "does this beat last year". It is "can I keep adding the same rupees every month while the chart goes red for nine straight months". If the answer is no, the strategy was right for the brochure and wrong for you.
Closer
The fastest portfolio you cannot hold is worth less than the slowest portfolio you can. The starter pick is a behavioural test, not a return number.
Before any of the strategy cards, the dual axis risk profile maps capacity and tolerance separately and refuses to recommend equity when the inputs say it should not.
rupeecase.com / risk profile