Indian institutions — mutual funds, insurance companies, banks — investing domestic capital in Indian markets.
DIIs are India-based institutions, most visibly mutual funds (increasingly funded by retail SIP inflows) and insurance companies like LIC. Over the past decade, sustained DII buying — largely powered by rising domestic retail participation via mutual fund SIPs — has become a structural counterweight to FII selling, something that wasn't true a decade ago.
When FIIs sell and DIIs absorb that selling (buy roughly the same amount), the market often stays range-bound rather than falling sharply — a dynamic increasingly common in Indian markets since 2020.