How women investors are reshaping India's investment landscape
While men still dominate India’s workforce, women are quietly transforming the country’s investment landscape, with a growing influence in the equity market.
For many women in India, owning an asset in their own name has been long been out of reach. Property ownership remains modest: only 13% of women are sole owners of a house and just 8% own land. But in this fast-growing economy, women are finding new paths towards wealth creation through financial markets.
Today, one-third of India’s mutual fund retail assets under management – or USD128 billion – are held by women, a figure that has more than doubled over the five years to March 2024. Indian women have been channeling savings into equities in unprecedented volumes in recent years. One in every four new stock market investors is female, according to State Bank of India.
Renu Maheshwari, Chairperson of the Association of Registered Investment Advisers in India (ARIA), attributes this rise to broader social shifts: more women are getting educated, joining the workforce, and earning their own incomes. Historically, educational opportunities for Indian women were limited, and societal expectations often confined them to domestic roles.
“I think we have had a silent revolution over the last two decades. Women have woken up to the fact that we can own, manage, and control our own financial destiny,” she said.
She noted a marked change in attitudes toward money among younger women, especially those exposed to financial education and career opportunities. “I personally have been running women financial workshops since 2012. The first batch I interacted with and the batch I have now have remarkable differences in the way they talk about money. The second generation of women who's getting educated do not have any hesitation about taking charge of their money,” she explained.
Urbanization and digitalization fuel growth
India’s government has made increasing female labor force participation a priority. Significant progress has been made: female labor force participation rate jumped to 42% in 2023-2024 from only 23.3% in 2017-18. That number, however, still lags that of the US ( 57%), and China (60%).
This shift is closely tied to urbanization. As more women move to cities, their lifestyles and financial behaviors change. Jitendra Gohil, CFA, Chief Investment Strategist at Kotak Alternate Asset Managers, says the growth of women investors is a natural outcome of this evolution.
“When women move to urban areas, their lifestyles completely changes. You don’t cook anymore, you want to eat out, go for entertainment and travel. Gradually as population moves from rural to urban, we are seeing this trend starting to pick up for the past seven to eight years, but now it is accelerating,” he said. “We see this as a natural trend to come out of it.”
Young women investors (under 35), particularly in emerging urban regions, are the fastest growing segment of the market.
At the same time, India’s rapid digitalization has also played a key role in expanding access to investing. Priti Rathi Gupta, Founder of LXME (pronounced Lakshmi for the Hindu goddess of wealth), a women-focused financial platform, points to the impact of India’s digital public infrastructure such as the unique digital identification and unified payments interface (UPI).
“What that did was really make digital access very easy for people. That democratization has allowed a very large population to start this journey. Fintechs have also played a key role to take this to people at the ground level to create the awareness and enable them to put their small savings into mutual funds,” she explained.
Gupta observed that women tend to be goal-oriented investors, making them more patient and disciplined in growing their money.
However, Maheshwari cautioned that many new investors lack experience with market downturns, making financial education critical to future growth.
“Now, this population has not seen the 2007-2008 global financial crisis. They have not experienced that risk themselves. It makes them a little fearless compared to previous generations,” cautioned Maheshwari. She emphasized the need to help new investors better understand the risks and complexities of various financial products, ensuring they make informed decisions as they build their wealth.
A growth market
India’s trend of rising financial wealth among women reflects a broader global shift. According to McKinsey, between 2018 and 2023, the amount of wealth controlled by women worldwide grew by 51%, outpacing the overall growth in global financial wealth (43%) during the same period. That figure is projected to grow by another 10% by 2030.
As India’s economy continues to expand, more women earners will emerge, creating demand for female-tailored financial products and services.
“We knew that this cohort is a growing cohort with a large potential,” said Gupta. “Money management is a behavioral science, but given that it is a male-dominated field, personalizing for women is a gap.”
The shift in women’s roles is also starting to be reflected at the top of the very companies women are investing in. Gohil at Kotak Alternate Asset Managers, points to succession trends among India’s large, family-owned listed firms.
“The change in mindset of promoters (company founders) transferring their businesses to their daughters – and the daughters doing pretty well – is clearly visible now,” he said.
That said, the overall number of women in top leadership roles at listed companies is still low, according to a 2024 report by CFA Institute and CFA Society India. But Maheshwari of ARIA says that as India’s economy continues to transition toward a knowledge-based one, women have all the incentives to move up: “Muscle power doesn’t make that much money anymore as brain power. The moment that change happens in the economy, it’s very difficult to stop one gender because now there’s level playing field.”
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