It did not get worse. The money found it.
01
Size is a headwind no factsheet prints. A fund's edge tends to shrink as its assets grow, and the erosion bites hardest on the small and mid cap funds where the good ideas are the hardest to buy in size.
02
Money chases the track record, then competes it away. Flows pour in after the good years, the fund gets too big to repeat them, and the alpha that drew the crowd quietly funds its own end.
03
Read the assets next to the mandate. A Rs 50000 cr small cap fund and a Rs 800 cr one cannot run the same playbook. Ask if it is still small enough to do the thing you are paying it to do.
A fund rarely gets worse because the manager got worse. It gets worse because the money found it. The best years are often the quiet ones before the crowd arrives.