On the first day of India Today Conclave 2025 in Mumbai on Thursday, ‘Middle Class: The New Bulls in the Market’, all the experts expressed their opinion on the discussion in the session. These included MK Venture Promoter Madhusudan Banana, Kotak Mahindra Asset Management Company MD Nilesh Shah and Marselus co-founder Pramod Balli. During this, he explained the power of mutual funds with calculations while talking about the changes in investing in India and told how it is becoming a profitable deal.
Stock market today self -reliant market
The session started on the increasing interest of middle class in the stock market and the increase in the number of investors. Sharing the figures of the last five years, Madhusudan Banana said that the number of those investing in equity has increased and there has been a big jump in the last five years. On NSE data, he said that out of a total of 12 crore stock market investors, 2 crore have been connected in just five years. Talking further on the change in equity investment, he said that in these five years, there has been a big bounce in wealth creation in India. Promoters and retail investors contributed more in the market, which is around 85%, while the Indian market was only 15% dependent on foreign investors.
According to Madhusudan Banana, people are now making a lot of money from the market and not everyone is in the stock market, but people are taking their steps forward to start investment from somewhere. Today there has been so much change that market investment is also increasing from Tier-2, Tier-3 cities, on whose strength the stock market has now become a self-sufficient market. Apart from the market, people have now understood the benefits of mutual fund investment, which has given more returns than bank deposits in the last two decades and is constantly attracting investors. Meanwhile, he said that investors who are investing money in derivatives or F&O are not investors, but traders, because the stock market has always proved to be beneficial despite an up-down up-down for long-term investment.
MK Ventures promoter Madhusudan Banana emphasized that the biggest risk in the markets is not to lose money, but an investment time limit. He said, if you want to earn money in six months because your neighbor has earned immediate returns at a tip, then the risk of loss is very high. But if you continue investing and bring diversity in the moving investment, then you can get better returns in the long term.
Such a revenge way of investment and saving
Nilesh Shah, who was in the panel, spoke about the changing attitudes of investors and the system of ‘yesterday today and yesterday’ while talking about the self-sufficient market, he said that those who were yesterday were investors of our grandparents and rely on investment in EPFO-PF. Shah of Kotak Mahindra Asset Management explained with an example that the PF Corpus, who came decades ago, was 25 lakh crores in March 24, which is expected to be 30 lakh crores in March 2025. At the same time, subscribers are around 7 crores since its inception. Accordingly, those investing in it made average subscriber wealth Rs 3.34 lakh.
NPS came in 2004 against Nilesh Shah, and now its corpus is Rs 14 lakh crore, while real subscribers (except NPS Vatsalya and other schemes) have a number 1.2 crore, the average subscriber wealth was Rs 11.24 lakh, that is, yesterday’s generation understood the change. Shah said that today’s generation puts money in PPF, if they invest a regular investment of Rs 1.5 lakh for 25 years, then the total investment is 37.5 lakhs and makes a track of Rs 1.1 crore on maturity. But more funds can be deposited in equity linked saving schemes.
Nilesh Shah said that all the mutual funds have not given strong returns, but most have benefited in the longitarm. Explaining mathematics, he said that the investment of Rs 37.5 lakh was made in PPF, if the much money was invested in the mutual fund equity linked saving scheme, then the fund deposited according to the returns would have been about Rs 4.4 crore even after deducting the tax of 12 per cent. The upcoming generation will get to learn from this, because their dreams must have increased even more.
Changes in investment portfolio are necessary
Marselas co-founder Pramod Gubbi, who was involved in the discussion, said that in the longitarm investment, mutual funds are proving to be helpful in meeting the target set for retiring. He told the importance of research for investment in the stock market and said that the investment made through it is beneficial. Talking about successful investors, he said that good returns can be achieved through asset allocation. He advised investors to keep changing their portfolio in their investments and said that they would be left behind if they do not do so.
Is the increasing scope of AI also affecting investment in the stock market? Responding to this advice, Pramod Gubbi said that AI is already being used in research and analysis and is also benefiting from it, but he emphasized that AI should be seen as a guarding system, it cannot replace the traditional methods of investment.
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