A Mutual Fund is a trust that pools the savings of a number of investors who share a common financial goal. It is essentially a diversified portfolio of financial instruments - these could be equities, debentures / bonds or money market instruments. The corpus of the fund is then deployed in investment alternatives that help to meet predefined investment objectives. The income earned through these investments and the capital appreciation realised are shared by its unit holders in proportion to the number of units owned by them. Thus a Mutual Fund is a suitable investment for the common man as it offers an opportunity to invest in a diversified, professionally managed basket of securities at a relatively low cost.

The benefits of investing in mutual funds are as follows -
Access to professional money managers - Your money is managed by experienced fund managers using advanced scientific and mathematical techniques.
Diversification -Mutual funds aim to reduce the volatility of returns through diversification by investing in a number of companies across a broad section of industries and sectors. It prevents an investor from putting "all eggs in one basket". This inherently minimizes risk. Thus with a small investible surplus an investor can achieve diversification that would have otherwise not been possible.
Liquidity - Open-ended mutual funds are priced daily and are always willing to buy back units from investors. This mean that investors can sell their holdings in mutual fund investments anytime without worrying about finding a buyer at the right price. In the case of other investment avenues such as stocks and bonds, buyers are not necessarily available and therefore these investment avenues are less liquid compared to open-ended schemes of mutual funds.
Tax Efficiency
Low transaction costs - Since mutual funds are a pool of money of many investors, the amount of investment made in securities is large. This therefore results in paying lower brokerage due to economies of scale.
Transparency - Prices of open ended mutual funds are declared daily. Regular updates on the value of your investment are available. The portfolio is also disclosed regularly with the fund manager's investment strategy and outlook.
Well-regulated industry - All the mutual funds are registered with SEBI and they function under strict regulations designed to protect the interests of investors.

In Mutual Funds, the investments of investors are pooled to form a common investible corpus and the gain/loss to all investors during a given period are same for all investors. In the case of portfolio management schemes, the investments of a particular investor remain identifiable to him. Here the gain or loss of investors will be different from each other.