The concept of mutual funds was conceived to pool the resources of small investors and deploy the same in the capital markets to help industrialization through participation in the equity and debt instruments. This study is aimed to examine the past trends and future projections besides analyzing risk and return for select schemes of mutual funds in private and public sector in India. The first chapter deals with introduction, origin and growth of mutual funds in India during 1963-2008 and the need for the study. This chapter is intended to trace the historical background of global mutual funds in general and the Indian mutual funds in particular. Apart from this, an analysis of trends in the Assets Under Management' during 2003-09 relating to the private sector and public sector is presented. In India, there were a few studies on the mutual funds, which have a complete scientific analysis, primarily due to comparatively short period of existence of Mutual funds. However a rigorous scientific research was taken place in this subject in other countries. In this context this book focuses on performance appraisal of mutual funds in India among private vs public sector.