In 1994, a young woman joined HDFC in Kolkata and, like many salaried Indians then, began saving a few hundred rupees a month in a recurring deposit. There was no app, no Systematic Investment Plan (SIP), and she knew nothing about the share market. Three decades later, an 18-year-old in Thiruvananthapuram was already six years into investing—using his father’s demat account during the Covid-19 lockdown, before he was old enough to open one of his own.
Between these two decisions lies the story of how India transformed the way its people build wealth. One generation saved because it had few alternatives; the next invests because it has many. That, perhaps more than anything else, is what financial inde pendence looks like.
To understand how all this has played out, ET Wealth spoke to seven investors between the ages of 18 and 67. Their portfolios look wildly differ ent from one another. Each of them started investing in a different India, with different products and a different idea of what money was even for. We explore how today’s young investors differ from their parents.
The careful saver
For 67-year-old Bengaluru-based ad vertising professional Pratap Kumar, building wealth started with saving, not investing. When he began earning in the late 1980s, money was always tight. “Those days salaries were not that high,” he recalls. With two sons to educate and household expenses piling, whatever he could save went into safe and familiar options. Gold was one of them. He regularly put money into jewellery shop instalment schemes. “You paid every month, and after 24 months you could buy gold by adding a little extra money,” he says. He also contributed to his provident fund while working in a salaried job.
Before you continue reading
How financially free are you?
Most people overestimate their financial freedom. Discover your Financial Freedom score through a quick survey
Those savings later helped him build the first floor of his house. When he left his job in 2001 to work on his own, he became an LIC and general insurance agent for a couple of years to earn an additional income while building his business.
The stock market never attracted him in his early years. His father and brother invested in shares, but his own experi ence with Initial Public Offers (IPOs) was disappointing. “Most of the IPOs I applied for with the little money I had, I never got lucky,” he says. With limited savings and a fear of losing money, equities never became a priority.
His story shows how many Indians ap proached money before financial markets became widely accessible. Savings ac counts, provident funds, gold and fixed deposits were considered safe, while stocks were seen as risky and difficult to under stand.
Things changed in the early 2000s when he met a financial adviser. Around 2002-03, he began investing through SIPs in mutual funds and continued them for two decades. Over time, he also invested in fixed depos its, post office savings schemes, senior citi zen savings schemes and insurance. Even today, he keeps a small amount in direct equities, buying and selling shares for mod est profits.
His portfolio changed slowly over the years. Until his late 30s, almost all his mon ey stayed in a savings account. After turn ing 40, he moved into mutual funds while continuing with bank deposits and other safe investments. Looking back, he believes mutual funds played the biggest role in building his wealth and helped him invest in real estate as well. His only regret is not investing more in equities earlier. “I could have done better,” he says. Today, Kumar estimates his net worth in crores. But for him, wealth is not about the number. “It’s the confidence that I don’t need to depend on anyone for anything,” he says.
Bricks and compounding
If Kumar’s story is about preserving wealth, Jayati Ghosh’s is about adding to it, one layer at a time. Ghosh , a 55-year-old resident of Kolkata, joined HDFC in 1994, after graduating. She started at the bottom of the organisation and spent 30 years at the firm, achieving financial freedom at 52 and retiring as Deputy Vice President in 2023 after HDFC merged with HDFC Bank. “Our wealth was built patiently over decades through discipline, consistency and the power of compounding,” she says. Like many salaried employees in the 1990s, her first investment was a recurring deposit. She also bought LIC endowment and money-back policies, which were popu lar at the time. But today, she feels those products did not create much wealth. “The money stayed there for years, and the re turns were small,” she says.
As India’s economy opened up, new in vestment opportunities started appearing. In 1995, HDFC offered shares to her at Rs.10 each. That became her first real investment in the stock market. Soon after, she began applying for IPOs. One of her early suc cesses was UTI Bank (now Axis Bank). She bought shares at around Rs.20 and later sold them for about Rs.60-70.
She became more active in equities dur ing the early 2000s, but the 2008 market crash changed her approach. She lost around Rs.3.5 lakh, a large amount for her at the time. After that, she stopped trading and focused on holding good companies for the long term.
Pratap Kumar, 67Bengaluru
Profession:
Advertising professional
Started with
Savings account, gold, Provident Fund
Alongside equities, she contin ued building wealth through other avenues. She contributed not just to Employee Provident Fund (EPF) but also voluntarily increased her PF contributions for almost three dec ades. Her home loan Equated Monthly Instalments (EMIs) gradually built a valuable real estate asset. As her income increased, she started SIPs in mutual funds around 2016-17 and later added products like Portfolio Management Services (PMS) and Alternative Investment Funds (AIF).
Employee Stock Option Plans (ESOPs) played a key role in Ghosh’s wealth creation. She invested 80% of her gratuity amount in unlisted NSE shares at around Rs.800 each. Three years later, the shares are worth about Rs.2,125, taking the investment to near ly 2.7 times its original value. Today, her portfolio reflects how
investing in Indiahas evolved. It includes real estate, direct equities, mutual funds, PMS, AIFs, gold, silver and NPS. For Ghosh, financial independence means peace of mind. “Knowing that all my needs are taken care of without depending on a regular salary.”
The sandwich generation
The four investors in the middle of this story—Ravi Nagrani, 42; Navneet Gupta, 39; Monil Thakkar, 29; and Anjali Jaiwal, 28—belong to one broad generation, but they didn’t invest alike. Thakkar and Jaiswal put their very first salary to work in the mar ket. Nagrani and Gupta took the long way round.
The early starter
Ravi Nagrani, a 42-year-old resident of Pune, finished hotel management in 2004, took a job at Grand Hyatt Mumbai on Rs.5,000 a month, paid Rs.1,800 for a shared flat—and started investing. “It was natural for me to invest rather than spend,” he says, crediting his mother’s saving habit in their joint family. He began with bank fixed deposits, the only product he understood. In 2005, after Franklin Templeton set up a stall in the hotel canteen, he made his first equity mu tual fund investment, funding his SIP with a booklet of post-dated cheques.
The funds did well through the 2007-08 boom. Then came two les sons. In 2008, he got caught in the Reliance Power IPO frenzy as he and his mother put in about `1 lakh. The stock listed near Rs.400 and sank. The hype surrounding the investment was immense. The experience taught him that popularity alone does not make a good investment. But the bigger les son was about holding on. When the 2008 crash hit his mutual funds, his MBA finance professor asked him one question: do you need the money today? He didn’t. Nagrani, who is Co-founder of The Prudent Investor, a mutual fund distributor, didn’t sell. “Staying invested during the 2008-09 crash and continuing to invest over the next two decades helped build a sizeable invest ment portfolio that eventually gave me the confidence to leave the corporate world in 2023,” he says.
For a long stretch, he was roughly 95% equity, with the only debt coming from his compulsory Provident Fund. He added US funds around 2013-14. Today the portfolio is well balanced: around 60-65% total equity (about 46% Indian, 15% global), gold near 14%, and debt around 25%. He skips crypto, and his cricket metaphor explains why. “I don’t need to hit a six on every ball. If I get 10-12% returns, I’ll easily achieve all my life goals.” He describes his position as “Coast FIRE”, a version of Financial Independence, Retire Early (FIRE), where his retirement corpus is already in place and can grow on its own while he covers his current expens es. “Financial independence isn’t about re tiring early or buying expensive things. It’s control over my time. If I want to play tennis on a weekday morning or take a paragliding lesson, I can. That’s worth more than a big ger house.”
Jayati Ghosh, 55Kolkata
Profession:
Ex-housing finance banker
Started with
Recurring deposits, LIC policies, EPF/VPF, gold savings schemes, FDs
Navneet Gupta, 39Bengaluru
Profession:
Entrepreneur
Started with
Real estate, FDs & gold
Ravi Nagrani, 42Pune
Profession:
Entrepreneur
Started with
Fixed deposits
The late bloomer
Unlike many investors who started with stocks, 39-year-old Navneet Gupta spent more than a decade building wealth without touching the equity market. “Real estate was the natural choice at that time,” says Gupta, founder of ServiceGTD, a managed eldercare platform. His first major invest ment, made in 2013, was an under-construc tion apartment in his hometown. The stock market made him uncomfortable. A close family member had entered the broking business just before the 2008 financial crisis and suffered heavy losses. That experience left a lasting impression. “Our view of the stock market was that it wasn’t the right place to put money,” he recalls. For years, he stayed with real estate, fixed deposits and gold.
The turning point came during the Covid-19 lockdown. With more time on his hands, Gupta started reading books by authors such as Morgan Housel, Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger. “I realised there was a method to investing. It wasn’t just gambling,” he says. He started investing in equities in 2021, but unlike many first-time investors during the post-Covid boom, he avoided chasing quick returns. He focused on fundamentally strong companies, invested gradually and held them for the long term.
