Holding period for positive return from Indian mutual funds

In India, households predominantly prefer to invest their surplus in financial securities, which provide stable return irrespective of whether they beat inflation or help in creating wealth. However, financial planners advise their clients to invest their surplus for long term in risky assets such as mutual funds to generate inflation beating returns. But when households ask for the meaning of long term in a definite number, it varies among the financial advisors. Hence, the study made an attempt to answer this question by calculating the minimum time duration required to generate a minimum positive return fortwo indices (NIFTY 50, S&P BSE SENSEX) and 6 mutual fund schemes for a period of23 years and the same two indices (NIFTY 50, S&P BSE SENSEX) and 20 mutual fundschemes for a period of 12 years and found out that the time horizon or the long term toensure minimum positive return ranges from 5 years to 9 years depending up on the typeof fund or the level of risk associated with the mutual fund schemes.