Hong Kong, Aug. 5 -- Is SIP a mutual fund? Is SIP a category of mutual funds? Every new investor might have had a learning curve with this or is still having one. We deep dive into what a Systematic Investment Plan is, and what its benefits are.

"I think I first heard about mutual funds during the later years of high school. Then, I started hearing about SIP through the investor initiative advertisements run by SEBI on TV but was unclear on what it was. I thought it might be a specific kind of mutual fund," says Sarthak Gupta, a 25-year-old economist at the mining company BHP." Later on during college, I learnt from one of my professors that SIP is just a mode of investment in mutual funds."

Like Gupta soon learnt, a SIP is not the syno...