Financialization of the savings of households in India has led to an increasedtransition of people from investing in traditional low yielding physical and fixed income assetsto professionally managed investments through the market mechanism. Mutual funds havecome up as the leading means for democratising the process of accessing capital markets by retail investors. In this context, this study is a comprehensive empirical analysis of investor awareness, perceptions of risk and return, channels of operations, and behavior among urbanand semi-urban investor segments in India. Based on an extensive synthesis of primary empirical studies (n=250 for western/national urban cities and n=105 for regional cities) andsecondary databases, the research uses descriptive statistics, Chi-Square (2) test of independence, One Way ANOVA and multiple linear regression models to study retail investment dynamics. The results show that although investor awareness and faith in wealthaccumulation over time is more than 65%, their detailed understanding of issues such as cost of operations and asset allocation remains unclear. Variables, namely financial literacy (=0.318, p<0.001), investment criterion match (=0.315, p<0.001), and risk perception (=0.308, p<0.001) contribute 91.6% of variance (R2=0.916, F=530.50) to investors' decision-making.

Akshavi Gajanan Awachat, Dr. Ujwala Narkhede, "A Study on Investor Awareness and Perception Towards Mutual Funds in India" International Journal of Scientific Research and Engineering Development, V9(5): Page(1774-1782) September - October 2026. ISSN: 2581-7175. www.ijsred.com. Published by Scientific and Academic Research Publishing.