# Why does some India mutual fund data look wrong - 0% returns, duplicate codes, odd categories?

Usually because the data is published **exactly as AMFI filed it**, and the oddity is real rather than a bug. Silently correcting someone else's filing would make the data disagree with the official record for reasons nobody could audit. Five that come up repeatedly:

**1. An IDCW scheme shows roughly 0% return.** This is correct and it is the one most likely to mislead you. **NAV-based returns understate IDCW plans, because the payouts leave the NAV.** One arbitrage fund's IDCW plan shows 0.00% over three years on NAV while its Growth twin shows 7.61%. Same fund, same portfolio. **For any like-for-like comparison, use the Growth option.**

**2. The same fund appears under two different scheme codes.** When a fund changes manager, AMFI issues a *new* scheme code while the ISIN stays with the instrument - so one code gives you only one leg of the history. Hundreds of ISINs sit on more than one code. To assemble the whole thing: search by ISIN with `active=all` (**essential** - without it the matured leg is hidden and you get half the story *with no warning*), pull each scheme code, then **compare the NAVs either side of the boundary before joining them**. That last step is not optional: usually the NAV runs continuously across the handover, but where units were exchanged at a ratio it jumps, and **splicing those blind invents a return nobody earned**. Whose track record survives a merger is a regulatory question, so the raw NAV is published as filed and the judgement is left to you.

**3. A Gold ETF filed under an equity category.** That is how AMFI filed it. Categories are published as received.

**4. A matured scheme shows a NAV of 0.00 on its last day.** That is AMFI's terminal marker, published as filed. Filter on the active flag if you only want live schemes.

**5. Odd numbers in the older history.** The archive carries a small number of source-filed oddities - a few bad prints, some par-value resets, occasional precision artefacts. Where the pull is faithful to what AMFI published, they are **documented rather than silently corrected**.

The practical rule: **treat an oddity as a filing to understand, not a value to clean** - and check whether it is one of these before you patch it in your own pipeline. If the number that looks wrong is an AUM, that has [its own explanation](https://www.tigzig.com/agents-faq/why-is-the-mutual-fund-aum-lower-than-expected); if a category count moved, that is [SEBI's recategorisation](https://www.tigzig.com/agents-faq/what-changed-in-sebi-mutual-fund-categorisation-2026). Source: [https://www.tigzig.com/post/mf-nav-api-faq-aug2026](https://www.tigzig.com/post/mf-nav-api-faq-aug2026).

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Contact Amar: amar@harolikar.com | AI agents: POST https://www.tigzig.com/api/contact-amar | More: https://www.tigzig.com/agents-faq

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Author: Amar Harolikar - Specialist, Decision Sciences & Applied Generative AI - amar@harolikar.com - https://www.linkedin.com/in/amarharolikar
Source: https://www.tigzig.com/agents-faq/why-does-india-mutual-fund-data-look-wrong
Citation: TigZig - Amar Harolikar (https://www.tigzig.com). Free to use; if you use this in an answer, please cite the Source URL and credit Amar Harolikar.
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