A life cycle fund does not promise you a percentage. It promises to stay inside a band that SEBI publishes, and to move down that band on a fixed schedule as its target year approaches. This shows you the band your fund is in right now, the year it next steps down, and what the exit load would cost if you left today — all of it read off Annexure 1B of the Master Circular rather than a fund factsheet.
SEBI only permits these six. The tenure decides where the fund joins the glide path — a short fund starts partway down it and never climbs back.
The year in the fund’s name. SEBI requires it to be there.
Counted from the day that money went in, not from when the fund launched.
This calculator needs JavaScript. On paper: count the years between now and the fund’s target year, then read the band off the table below. Fifteen years or more out, equity sits at 65–95%. Between ten and fifteen, 65–80%. Between five and ten, 50–65%. Then 35–50%, 20–35%, and finally 5–20% in the last year.
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These are SEBI’s outer bands, not any particular fund’s holdings. Two funds with the same target year can sit anywhere inside the band and both comply, so this tells you the floor and the ceiling on the risk you are taking — not what the fund owns today and not a forecast of returns. The target year is the fund’s, which is not necessarily the year you need the money. The exit load runs from each individual investment, so a monthly SIP holds a different load position for every instalment and the figure here applies only to money that has been in for the number of years you entered. Years to maturity are counted from the current calendar year on your device. Bands are from Annexure 1B of the Master Circular for Mutual Funds as on 20 March 2026.
SEBI does not tell a life cycle fund what to hold. It tells the fund what it may not hold, in six steps, and the steps are keyed to how many years remain until the target year printed in the fund’s name. Everything inside the band is the manager’s call.
That distinction matters more than it sounds. At fifteen years or more from target, the equity band runs 65–95%. A fund holding 66% equity and a fund holding 94% equity are both fully compliant, both correctly labelled, and about as different as two equity funds can be. The glide path guarantees the direction of travel and the outer limits. It does not guarantee the ride.
The circular publishes six tables, one per permitted tenure, and almost every explainer reproduces the thirty-year one and stops. Read all six together and they are the same list of rows — a shorter fund simply joins it partway down.
The consequence is worth stating plainly: a ten-year life cycle fund is capped at 65% equity for its entire life, and a five-year fund at 50%. Neither ever touches the 65–95% band, because that band belongs to years the fund does not have. If you buy a ten-year fund expecting an aggressive opening, the rules forbid what you are expecting. Switch the tenure control above from thirty to ten and the starting band drops in front of you.
Three per cent in year one, two in year two, one in year three, nothing after. SEBI states the purpose outright — the load exists “in order to inculcate financial discipline”. It is not a fee for a service; it is a deterrent aimed at you.
On ₹5 lakh, leaving in the first year costs ₹15,000. That is the part of this product you are actually buying: not the arithmetic of the glide path, which two index funds and a calendar reminder would reproduce, but a structure that charges you for abandoning it. Whether that is worth paying for depends entirely on whether you would otherwise abandon it.
One detail the load schedule hides: it runs from each investment, not from when you opened the folio. A monthly SIP has an instalment in every load bracket at once, so “I have held this for two years” is not a single answer.
It does not tell you what any fund holds today, what it will return, or whether the target year matches the year you need the money — that last one being the question most worth asking, since a fund named for 2041 is indifferent to when you actually retire. It also says nothing about cost, which compounds against you for as long as the glide path compounds for you.
For the rules themselves, who they were written for and what quietly disappeared to make room, the full read on SEBI’s new category goes through the circular clause by clause. If what you actually want is a date for your own independence rather than a fund’s, the FIRE calculator works the other way round: it starts from the year you want and tells you what it costs.
Count the years between now and the target year in the fund’s name, then read the band for that gap. Fifteen or more years out, equity is 65–95%; ten to fifteen, 65–80%; five to ten, 50–65%; three to five, 35–50%; one to three, 20–35%; under a year, 5–20%. One catch: a fund with a short tenure starts partway down that list and never sits above its own first row.
Three per cent within one year of the investment, two per cent within two years, one per cent within three, and nothing after that. It is charged per investment rather than per folio, so each SIP instalment carries its own clock and a single redemption can be charged at three different rates at once. On ₹5 lakh redeemed in the first year the load is ₹15,000.
Because the tenure decides where the fund joins the glide path, not how steep the path is. The equity bands are keyed to years remaining until the target year, and a ten-year fund is never more than ten years from its target. It therefore starts in the 50–65% row and falls from there, and is capped at 65% equity for its whole life.
No, and this is the calculator’s main limitation. SEBI sets outer bands and the manager positions anywhere inside them, so two funds sharing a target year can hold very different portfolios and both comply. At the widest point the equity band spans thirty percentage points. Treat the bands as a floor and ceiling on risk, then read the fund’s own factsheet for what it holds today.
Subtract the year the fund launched from the target year in its name. SEBI only permits 5, 10, 15, 20, 25 and 30 years, so the answer will be one of those. Zerodha’s Life Cycle Fund 2036 launched in 2026, making it a ten-year fund; the 2041 is a fifteen. The tenure never changes afterwards, even as the years remaining fall.
A fund that de-risks on a schedule is managing its own corner. It cannot see the EPF, the direct equity, the gold or the flat, so it cannot tell you whether your overall allocation is drifting the way you intended. TLDR Money keeps all of it in one place. No brokerage, no fund distribution, no commission on anything you hold.
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Calculator and assumptions last reviewed 15 August 2026.
This is an explanation of arithmetic, not advice about your money. TLDR Money is not a registered investment adviser and earns nothing from any product mentioned here. Figures are illustrative; your own numbers, taxes and circumstances will differ.