August 11, 2025

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STOCK MARKETS THE NEW BULLS

MILLIONS OF BOLD AND FINANCIALLY SAVVY SMALL INVESTORS ARE SHORING UP INDIA'S BOURSES By ANILESH S. MAHAJAN Illustration by NILANJAN DAS / AI Lunchbreaks are when Anjali Mehta, a 29-year-old schoolteacher in Kanpur, finds time to think about her investments. She checks the latest options on her cell phone and recently earmarked Rs 5,000 for her fifth contribution to a mutual fund this year. The amount was small. But the decision was anything but casual. "I consider these investments as my future," she says. "Banks give nothing, gold is too slow. The stock market is where the real action is." Anjali is not an exception. She's part of a fast-growing tribe of middle-class Indians who are rewriting the rules of personal finance and, in the process, changing the face of India's resilient stock market. In the past five years, India has witnessed a quiet revolution in household investing, with the number of dematerialised or demat accounts (where share certificates are stored electronically) opened by small investors seeing a near-five-fold increase. They rose from 41 million in FY20 to 192 million by FY25 with a phenomenal CAGR (compound annual growth rate) of 35 per cent. Of these, an estimated 75 per cent were for retail participation alone, with the remaining dominated by institutional investorsIndia's mutual fund industry, which is the favoured option, is riding an unprecedented wave. The total assets under management (AUM) in the industry stood at Rs 74.4 lakh crore by the end of Q1FY26. This is nearly thrice the Rs 25.5 lakh crore just five years earlier. Small investors accounted for 28 per cent of the AUMs in FY25,

A Touchof Ro yalty

The BJP sheds inhibitions about wooing erstwhile royals to advance their political cause. For the royals, it is a chance to regain political and cultural relevance By RAHUL NORONHA Madhya Pradesh chief minister Mohan Yadav is known to have a penchant for offsite cabinet meetings. Whenever he is in a mood to indulge his cabinet colleagues or send out a political signal, the venue shifts from the cabinet room on the fifth floor of Vallabh Bhavan--the state secretariat in Bhopal. On May 20, it was the Rajwada, the 200-year-old palace of the Holkars, the erstwhile rulers of Indore, that was the venue. CM Yadav sat in an ornate chair, while his cabinet colleagues were arranged in a manner that evoked the impression of a Holkar Durbar. The meeting was to discuss the plans for the upcoming 300th birth anniversary of Maharani Ahilyabai Holkar, and the commemorative events to be held in her honourThe enactment of this piece of royal theatre was not lost on anyone. "There's nothing objectionable about celebrating an icon like `Devi' Ahilyabai," a source said. "But it's the royal makeover of an otherwise routine cabinet meeting that stood out." This is not all. The BJP-ruled MP has also launched `Virasat se Vikas' (heritage to development), a programme to revive the legacies of Rani Durgawati, Rani Avanti Bai, Ahilyabai, Raja Bhabhut Singh, as well as the legendary King VikramadityaAUGUST 11, 2025 INDIA TODAY