Short answer: India had about 1.79 lakh individual mutual fund distributors (MFDs) as of March 2026, and for the first time slightly more than half of them sit outside the top-30 cities. Nobody publishes city-level counts, so we queried AMFI’s public “Locate a Mutual Fund Distributor” tool city by city and compiled the numbers ourselves. Ahmedabad has roughly 6,168 registered ARN holders, Pune 7,899, Jaipur 3,155, Surat 4,972 — while towns like Kota (412), Mehsana (77) and Ahmednagar (265) remain remarkably thin. If you’re an advisor deciding where the competition is, or a student wondering whether your home town can support a practice, these numbers are the closest thing to a map that exists.
Data compiled 6 September 2026. Methodology and honest caveats at the bottom — these are directional counts, not a census.
The national picture first
Straight from AMFI’s distributor data for FY2026:
| Category | T30 (top-30 cities) | B30 (beyond top-30) | Total |
|---|---|---|---|
| Individual MFDs | 88,224 | 90,782 | 179,006 |
| Corporate distributors | 7,874 | 2,916 | 10,790 |
| Employees (bank/ND EUIN holders) | 79,699 | 62,471 | 142,170 |
| Total | 179,619 | 161,424 | 341,043 |
Two things stand out. First, the individual MFD population has crossed the halfway mark into B30 India — 90,782 of 179,006 individual distributors now work from beyond the top-30 cities. Second, the business keeps attracting newcomers: 29,536 new individual MFDs joined in FY2026 alone.
City-by-city: Gujarat
Counts are registered ARN holders whose city field exactly matches the city name in AMFI’s locate-a-distributor tool:
| City | Registered ARN holders |
|---|---|
| Ahmedabad | 6,168 |
| Surat | 4,972 |
| Vadodara | 3,126 |
| Rajkot | 2,362 |
| Jamnagar | 897 |
| Bhavnagar | 821 |
| Anand | 638 |
| Gandhinagar | 505 |
| Junagadh | 454 |
| Mehsana | 77 |
Gujarat’s story is concentration at the top and open field below: the four big cities hold over 16,000 registrations, while district headquarters like Mehsana — a city of over 2 lakh people — show two-digit counts.
City-by-city: Rajasthan
| City | Registered ARN holders |
|---|---|
| Jaipur | 3,155 |
| Jodhpur | 945 |
| Udaipur | 671 |
| Ajmer | 494 |
| Kota | 412 |
| Bikaner | 361 |
| Bhilwara | 326 |
| Alwar | 320 |
Rajasthan is the sleeper: it was among the fastest-growing states for mutual fund AAUM in 2025 (up 19.55% year on year, per AMFI data reported by Cafemutual), yet no city outside Jaipur has even a thousand registered distributors.
City-by-city: Maharashtra (excluding Mumbai)
| City | Registered ARN holders |
|---|---|
| Pune | 7,899 |
| Nagpur | 2,560 |
| Nashik | 2,344 |
| Aurangabad* | 1,344 |
| Kolhapur | 1,266 |
| Sangli | 573 |
| Amravati | 419 |
| Solapur | 384 |
| Ahmednagar | 265 |
*Aurangabad exists in both Maharashtra and Bihar; AMFI’s free-text city field cannot cleanly separate the two, so read this row with extra caution.
Maharashtra leads India in mutual fund assets by a huge margin (₹33.76 lakh crore AAUM in 2025, about six times Gujarat’s ₹5.61 lakh crore), and Pune alone out-registers every non-Mumbai city in the country on this list.
What the numbers mean if you’re (thinking of) building a practice
- The barrier is low everywhere, so raw counts overstate competition. Registration costs about ₹5,000 all-in, and many registered ARNs are inactive or long expired. The number of active, servicing MFDs in any city is meaningfully lower than these counts.
- B30 is where the growth is. More than half of individual MFDs are already in B30 towns, B30 AUM is growing faster than T30, and from March 2026 SEBI permits AMCs to pay additional incentives for onboarding new B30 and women investors. A thin-count town with a growing AAUM state trend (Kota, Udaipur, Bhavnagar, Bikaner) is a structural opportunity, not a wasteland.
- Assets follow trust, not headcount. AMFI’s own distribution data shows commission income concentrates in a small top tier of distributors. In a city with 400 registrations, the advisor with a credential, a niche and a service system competes with perhaps a few dozen serious practitioners, not 400.
Methodology (and the honest caveats)
We queried AMFI’s public Locate a Mutual Fund Distributor tool on 6 September 2026, city by city, recording the aggregate result count for the exact city-name match. No personal details were collected. Three caveats matter:
- Undercount: AMFI’s city field is free text from each distributor’s KYD registration. “Surat” (exact) misses records filed under “Surat City”, “Dist Surat” or locality names, so true city totals are higher.
- Overcount: the tool lists long-expired and inactive ARNs alongside active ones, so these are gross historical registration counts, not today’s active advisor population.
- Ambiguity: a few city names repeat across states (see Aurangabad above).
The two big caveats push in opposite directions. Treat every figure as an order-of-magnitude reading — which is still far more than was publicly available before, since AMFI publishes no city-level distributor statistics.
Want a city we haven’t covered? Tell us and we’ll pull it in the next refresh. This dataset is free to cite with a link back to this page.
Frequently asked questions
How many mutual fund distributors are there in India in 2026?
About 1.79 lakh individual MFDs as of March 2026, within roughly 3.41 lakh total ARN/EUIN holders once corporate distributors and bank/national-distributor employees are counted. Around 29,500 new individual MFDs joined in FY2026 alone.
Which Indian city has the most mutual fund distributors?
Mumbai leads overall. Outside Mumbai, Pune (~7,899 registered ARN holders) and Ahmedabad (~6,168) top our compiled list, followed by Surat, Vadodara, Jaipur and Nagpur.
What is a B30 city, and why does it matter for MFDs?
B30 means “beyond the top 30” cities by mutual fund assets. Slightly over half of India’s individual MFDs now operate from B30 locations, B30 assets are growing faster than metro assets, and SEBI-approved incentives from March 2026 pay AMCs extra for bringing in new B30 and women investors — a tailwind for advisors based there.
Are all registered ARN holders active distributors?
No. AMFI’s public tool lists expired and inactive registrations alongside active ones, so the practising population in any city is meaningfully smaller than the registered count. Industry commission data also shows business concentrates within a small, serious top tier.
How can a new MFD stand out in a crowded city?
Specialise and certify. In a city with thousands of registrations, most are inactive or generalist; advisors who pick a niche (NRIs, doctors, retirees), build a service system, and carry a planning credential such as the CFP® — held by only ~3,534 people in all of India — compete in a far smaller field than the raw count suggests.
Sources
- AMFI, “Locate a Mutual Fund Distributor” — https://www.amfiindia.com/locate-distributor (queried city-by-city, 6-Sep-2026)
- Cafemutual, “Know the AUM of your state” (AMFI calendar-2025 AAUM by state) — https://cafemutual.com/news/industry/36955-know-the-aum-of-your-state
- Cafemutual, FY2025/FY2026 distributor-count reporting (1.62→1.79 lakh individual MFDs; new-ARN additions; B30 share) — https://cafemutual.com/news/industry/35733-india-has-over-3150-top-distributors
- Business Standard, “Sebi allows incentives for MF distributors to boost women, B30 onboarding” (Mar-2026 incentive) — https://www.business-standard.com/markets/news/sebi-allows-incentives-for-mf-distributors-to-boost-women-b-30-onboarding-125112701047_1.html
- FPSB, CFP professional counts (end-2025) — https://www.fpsb.org
