VanEck India Growth Leaders ETF (GRIN) — Review & Analysis

GRIN is VanEck's specialist India fund using a GARP (growth at a reasonable price) selection methodology — companies are screened on growth metrics blended with valuation discipline to find names that are growing fast but not priced for perfection. AUM is $14.98 million as at May 2026, with a 0.75% p.a. management fee. The fund listed on 24 April 2025, so it has just over a year of trading history. Compare GRIN across the full India universe on our India ETF page.

The four other India ETFs on the ASX each express a different philosophy, and GRIN's GARP angle is meaningfully different from all of them. NDIA tracks the Nifty 50 by market cap with no quality, value or growth screens. IIND applies a quality factor screen — profitability, low debt, earnings stability — which tilts toward defensive consumer brands and IT services. GRIN explicitly targets growth-oriented names trading at reasonable multiples, which produces a much more cyclical, mid-cap-tilted portfolio than IIND. The actively managed options (FIIN and IAEF) use discretionary stock selection rather than rules-based factor screens.

GRIN's portfolio composition reveals just how different the GARP screen is. Financials sit at 31% — but the names are public-sector and regional banks (State Bank of India, Bank of India, Union Bank, Canara Bank, Karur Vysya) rather than the private-bank champions (HDFC, ICICI) that dominate NDIA and IIND. Industrials at 26% is a much heavier weighting than the Nifty 50 carries, capturing India's infrastructure and capital-goods build-out. Materials are 12.5% and Health Care 9.3%. The top 10 holdings make up just 27% of the portfolio — a far more diversified concentration than the cap-weighted alternatives where the top 10 typically reach 50%+.

That construction creates a fundamentally different return pattern. Cap-weighted India ETFs are dominated by private banks, IT services majors and Reliance Industries; GRIN is dominated by public sector banks, industrial cyclicals and infrastructure plays — companies that benefit from the government's capex programs and the recapitalisation of state-owned banks. The fund is unhedged. Our best Asia, China and emerging markets ETFs guide covers how factor-based funds like GRIN compare against the rest of the regional landscape.