Household Savings – Indian households moving their savings from gold and deposits into shares and mutual funds.
- 15.2% of household financial saving (goes to equities and funds, up from about 2% in FY12)
- $2.9bn a month into SIPs (about $420m a month in FY17)
- No. 1 derivatives exchange on earth (NSE, by number of contracts traded)
- 56% of new investors are under 30 (38.9% of the base, against 22.6% in FY19)
Most Indian household wealth still sits in gold and property. What has changed, and changed fast, is where the next rupee goes. It has gone straight past the slow end of the market to the fastest.
Equities and funds took about 2% of household financial saving in FY12 and 15.2% in FY25, while bank deposits fell from 58% to 35%. Individuals now own 18.8% of the listed market, against 11% a decade ago ($875bn against $83bn).
What changed in between was distribution. Zerodha took delivery brokerage to zero and capped the rest at a flat fee; Groww, Upstox and Angel One turned opening an account into a phone app, on top of the Aadhaar and UPI rails they did not have to build. India now has 44 million active trading accounts.
The signal to watch: Whether the accounts keep trading after the first bad year. Opening one now takes minutes; nobody has yet tested what keeps somebody in.
Where we would take your group
- Zerodha, Bengaluru. Took delivery brokerage to zero in 2010, stayed bootstrapped, and reset the industry’s pricing.
- Groww, Bengaluru. India’s largest broker by active clients, with 13 million of the 44 million.
- The exchange and the regulator, BKC. A square mile holding both the venue and the body that sets its rules.
Questions for the debrief
- Three platforms hold 58% of India’s active trading accounts, and two of them did not exist as brokers fifteen years ago. What did they actually sell: price, or interface?
- Opening an account went from a fortnight of paperwork to minutes on a phone, on public rails the brokers did not build. Who captured the value of that infrastructure?
- The shift is in the flow of saving, not yet in the stock of wealth. What has to stay true for this generation to leave its money in the market through a real drawdown?
