Writing in The Economic Times around Independence Day, Navneet Munot, MD and CEO of HDFC Asset Management, made an argument that is easy to nod along to and harder to sit with: India has won political freedom, and is still in the middle of winning the financial kind.
The optimistic half of his case is well evidenced. Mutual fund assets have grown roughly six-fold in ten years to cross ₹82 lakh crore. The monthly SIP book has grown tenfold to more than ₹30,000 crore, drawn from over 10 crore accounts. A rising share of that money now comes from beyond the thirty largest cities, one investor in four is a woman, and many are in their twenties, starting with a first salary.
The number that should give the industry pause
Then Munot puts the figure that undercuts the celebration. Around 6 crore Indians invest in mutual funds. The country has 140 crore people.
He sets it against a second comparison: Indian mutual fund assets are about a quarter of GDP. In the United States they exceed the size of the entire economy. On his own framing, the industry is not late in its journey. It is early.
What actually changed
Munot credits plumbing over persuasion. Aadhaar made verification paperless. UPI made money move at any hour — in June this year it carried 22.72 billion transactions worth ₹28.92 lakh crore, against 2.81 billion worth ₹5.47 lakh crore in the same month five years earlier. An SIP mandate can now be authorised on a UPI app.
Regulation did the rest. A SIP now starts at ₹250. Gold and silver are reachable through an ETF, a stake in a highway or an office tower through a REIT or InvIT. The minimum investment in a corporate bond has fallen from ₹10 lakh in 2022 to ₹10,000.
His historical note is worth keeping. In 1875 a group of Indian brokers pooled their own capital to found Asia’s first stock exchange in Bombay — before Tokyo, Shanghai or Hong Kong, on a street named in an Indian language. Capital markets, as he puts it, are not an import into India. They were simply reachable by very few for most of the 150 years since.
The behavioural evidence
The most striking data point in his column is not about assets at all. In March this year the Sensex fell more than 11 per cent in a single month, and SIP contributions that same month hit a record ₹32,087 crore. Equity schemes have taken net inflows for more than sixty consecutive months, through a pandemic, the war in Ukraine, conflict in West Asia and heavy foreign selling.
That has changed who owns the market. As of March 2026, domestic institutions held about 20 per cent of Indian listed equities against 16 per cent for foreign portfolio investors. Ten years earlier it was 12 against 21. A market once set by foreign flows now has a domestic anchor.
Munot is the CEO of the country’s largest fund house, so the bullishness is not disinterested. But the 6-crore-in-140-crore figure cuts against his own industry’s marketing, and he leads with it rather than burying it. That is the part worth taking seriously.
The behavioural claim is the one to watch. Sixty months of inflows have not yet included a long, grinding bear market — only sharp falls that recovered quickly. Whether the SIP habit survives a slow one is genuinely untested.
Written by MF Times from a column by Navneet Munot, MD & CEO, HDFC AMC, published in The Economic Times. Read the original ↗ · Views expressed there are his own.