An Empirical Study on Investors Behavior towards Mutual Funds Investment

In India, an individual investor generally invests their money in bank deposits, which do not offer a hedge against inflation and often have negative real returns due to inflation. The last few years have been very significant for the Indian mutual fund industry in terms of expansion and avenue for investments. But still, mutual funds investments have not been a favorable investment options as compared to other investment options. Thus, it is a cause of concern to the financial market and portfolio managers. This calls for better understanding of the investment behavioral patterns of mutual funds investors. In comparison to Asset under management (Aum) world wide, India ranks much below (World Bank, 2017). This research investigates Investment Behavior of selected sample drawn from Delhi NCR to find out factors that influence investors’ choice of mutual funds. Seventeen important factors have been chosen from prior researches reviewed here in this area. Then statistical tests such as “Chi square” and “t” tests were carried out. The study found that demographic factors like age, education, income and savings shape the investment behavior but not all factors specific to different mutual fund unit selected for analysis have significant individual influence on investment behavior of the sample investors.