Equity Linked Savings Scheme (ELSS) is a type of mutual fund, ELSS qualified for tax exemption (Maximum amount eligible for Deduction is Rs.1,50,000/-) under section 80c,
ELSS works similar to other mutual funds and the major difference is ELSS has a lock in period of 3 years (as ELSS schemes cannot be liquidated before 3 years). and it has tax exemption benefit.It also has both options of dividend and growth mutual funds with SIP option to invest periodically.
According to me Investing in ELSS mutual fund for tax exemption is best choice as The lock in period of 3 years is much lesser than lock in period of 15 years in PPF and 6 years in NSC or 5 years in bank FD. we need to choose the best ELSS fund as it comes with market risk (High risk = high returns) but, we can minimize the risk by averaging the investment with SIP.
Zerodha Mutual Funds gives good analytics & fundamental information about Mutual funds you can just login to mf.zerodha.com and check the historical performance of each mutual funds.
I have done little excel sorting work by studying from mf.zerodha.com site for my ELSS tax savings, you can refer below if you like to
hope this may help, but do re-check before investing.
In other equity mutual fund there is no lock-in-period and you can redeem your money as per your need that’s the main difference.