All mutual fund schemes offer two plans- Direct and Regular. In a Direct Plan, an investor has to invest directly with the AMC, with no distributor to facilitate the transaction and no investment advice.
In a Regular Plan, the investor invests through an intermediary such as distributor, broker or banker who does all the market research, gives investment advice and is paid a distribution fee by the AMC, which is charged to the plan.
Therefore, the direct plan has a lower expense ratio as there is no distribution fee involved, while the regular plan has a slightly higher expense ratio to account for the commission paid to a distributor to facilitate the transaction.