What are large cap, mid cap and small cap in India?

Before 2017, “mid cap” meant whatever each fund house wanted it to mean, which made fund categories incomparable. SEBI’s mutual-fund categorisation framework fixed the definition by rank so it moves with the market: in a bull run every company’s value rises, but there are still exactly 100 large caps. A fixed “₹20,000 crore = large cap” line would quietly reclassify hundreds of companies as prices moved.

The consequence worth knowing: band boundaries are competitive. A company becomes a large cap by out-growing the 100th name, not by crossing an absolute size — and the rupee value of the cutoff drifts every ranking cycle.

AMFI publishes the authoritative list twice a year (January and July), ranking companies on their average full market capitalisation over the preceding six months. Mutual funds must follow it — a “mid-cap fund” is required to hold predominantly companies ranked 101–250 on that list.

Screens and data sites, Solomo’s screener included, typically apply the rank rule to current market caps rather than the six-month average, so names near a boundary can differ from AMFI’s published list between cycles. The band is a useful lens either way: the same promoter-pledge percentage or ownership shift reads very differently in the 40th company by size than in the 900th.