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Economy and Personal Finance | June 9, 2026
In FY2024-25, for every Rs 100 Indian households put into bank deposits, they invested Rs 45.20 in mutual funds and equities, more than double the Rs 21.20 ratio of the previous year. Monthly SIP inflows crossed Rs 31,000 crore in December 2025. Mutual fund AUM crossed Rs 65.74 lakh crore by March 2025 and Rs 82 lakh crore by December 2025. In the same fortnight that SIP inflows hit their record, deposit growth in the banking system fell below 10%, creating a 200-basis-point gap with credit growth. This is not a coincidence. It is a structural shift in how India saves, and it is changing the foundations of the banking system.
Table of Contents
- Part I: The Shift That Has Already Happened Rs 45 for every Rs 100, bank deposits’ share falling from 58% to 37% of financial savings
- Part II: The SIP Machine: How Mutual Funds Captured India’s Middle Class From Rs 3,122 crore monthly (2016) to Rs 31,002 crore (December 2025), 9.88 crore active accounts
- Part III: The Banking Crisis This Is Creating Credit-deposit gap 700 bps at peak, structural liquidity risk, RBI Governor’s warning
- Part IV: The NIM Squeeze: How Banks Are Caught in a Trap Higher FD rates to attract deposits, NIM compression, infrastructure bond route
- Part V: The Household Savings Paradox Gross savings fell to 29.7% of GDP (4-decade low), financial savings at 5.1%, the quality question
- Part VI: The Infrastructure Funding Risk Banks fund long-term infrastructure, deposit crunch threatens credit pipeline, corporate bond market gap
- Part VII: Is the FD Actually Dying? Rs 218 trillion in deposits, FD still dominant but losing share, the nuance behind the narrative
- Part VIII: Where This Leads What banks must do, what regulators are watching, what this means for the saver
- Frequently Asked Questions
Rs 45.20
Invested in MFs and equities for every Rs 100 put in bank deposits in FY25. Was Rs 21.20 in FY24. Source: RBI Bulletin, Nov 2025.
Rs 31,002 cr
Monthly SIP inflow record, December 2025. Up from Rs 3,122 crore in April 2016. Source: AMFI.
700 bps
Peak gap between credit growth and deposit growth in early 2024, the worst in two decades. Source: RBI data.
9.88 crore
Active SIP accounts as of October 2025. Up from 5.28 crore in March 2022. Source: AMFI.
Part IThe Shift That Has Already Happened
The Numbers That Define This Moment
For decades, the Indian household’s default financial behaviour was simple. You earned money. You put some in a bank fixed deposit. You repeated this until you needed it for a house, a wedding, or an emergency. The bank paid you a fixed rate. You got your principal back. Nothing was exciting. Nothing was risky. It was boring in the best possible way.
That behaviour is changing at a pace that has surprised even the regulators. Data from the Reserve Bank of India’s November 2025 Bulletin shows that in FY2024-25, for every Rs 100 households put into bank deposits, they invested Rs 45.20 in mutual funds and equities combined. In FY2023-24, that ratio was Rs 21.20. The shift more than doubled in a single year.
The longer-term structural data makes this even clearer. Within total household financial savings, the share going to bank deposits fell from 58 percent in FY2012 to 37 percent in FY2023, according to RBI data. Over the same period, household savings in equities and mutual funds nearly doubled: from Rs 1.02 lakh crore in FY2021 to Rs 2.02 lakh crore in FY2023. By FY2024-25, provisional RBI estimates show the share of household savings going into shares and debentures, including mutual funds, rose sharply to 15 percent, up from an average of 6 percent over the prior decade.
The shift is structural, not cyclical: Some analysts argue this is simply a bull market effect. When markets rise, retail investors pour money in. When markets fall, they retreat to FDs. The data does not fully support this. Monthly SIP inflows have risen every single financial year without exception for nearly a decade, including during the COVID year of FY2020-21 when they declined only marginally. The equity mutual fund industry recorded 61 consecutive months of positive net inflows through March 2026. This is not FOMO. It is a generational change in savings behaviour anchored by the SIP habit.
| Year / Period | Bank Deposits’ Share of Financial Savings | MF and Equity Share | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| FY2011-12 | ~58% | ~6% (decade average) | RBI / NAS data |
| FY2022-23 | ~37% | ~9% (rising) | RBI data; PNB Research Paper “Shifting Household Savings Patterns” (June 2024) |
| FY2024-25 (Provisional) | 35.2% (down from 40.9% in FY21) | 13.1% MFs alone (up from 2.1% in FY21); total shares and debentures ~15% | RBI December 2025 Bulletin; RBI Handbook of Statistics 2024-25 |
| FY2024-25 incremental ratio | Rs 100 to bank deposits | Rs 45.20 to MFs and equities | RBI Bulletin, November 2025 |
Part IIThe SIP Machine: How Mutual Funds Captured India’s Middle Class
A Decade of Uninterrupted Growth
The SIP as a product concept is not new. It has existed in India since the 1990s. But the explosion of the past decade is without precedent. In April 2016, total monthly SIP contributions across the mutual fund industry stood at Rs 3,122 crore. By December 2025, that number was Rs 31,002 crore. That is a tenfold increase in nine years, with no single year of decline except for a minor dip during COVID-19 in FY2020-21.
The total SIP inflow for calendar year 2025 reached Rs 3.34 lakh crore, up from Rs 2.68 lakh crore in 2024 and Rs 1.84 lakh crore in 2023. Every year has been higher than the previous one, according to AMFI data.
Active SIP accounts stood at 9.88 crore as of October 2025, rising from 5.28 crore in March 2022. The mutual fund industry had 26.12 crore investor folios as of December 2025. Total industry AUM crossed Rs 65.74 lakh crore in March 2025 and reached Rs 82 lakh crore by December 2025, a 23 percent year-on-year rise according to the AMFI 2025 Annual Report.
Why the SIP Habit Proved so Sticky
Three forces combined to make the SIP machine nearly unstoppable.
First, the smartphone and UPI infrastructure made investing as easy as paying for groceries. An investor with a Jan Dhan account, an Aadhaar number, and a phone can start a Rs 500 monthly SIP in under five minutes from a tier-3 city. The friction that kept earlier generations away from mutual funds has largely disappeared.
Second, bull markets from 2020 to 2024, punctuated by brief corrections, created enormous visible wealth for early SIP adopters. When your neighbour’s Rs 3,000 monthly SIP compounded to Rs 8 lakh in five years, the social proof was overwhelming. Finfluencers on YouTube and Instagram amplified this data, often selectively, but the underlying returns were real enough to create genuine converts.
Third, the AMFI “Mutual Fund Sahi Hai” campaign, launched in 2017, ran for years and created a phrase that entered common parlance. Combined with the tax benefit on ELSS funds under Section 80C, mutual funds became mainstream, not niche.
| Financial Year | Monthly SIP Inflow (April figures, Rs crore) | Active SIP Accounts (crore) |
|---|---|---|
| FY2016-17 | ~3,122 | ~1.2 |
| FY2019-20 | ~8,000 | ~3.0 |
| FY2022-23 | ~13,573 (December 2022) | 6.12 |
| FY2024-25 | ~23,000+ (early FY25) | 9.00+ (July 2024) |
| FY2025-26 | Rs 31,002 crore (December 2025, record) | 9.88 (October 2025) |
Source: AMFI Monthly Reports (official data). URL: amfiindia.com
Part IIIThe Banking Crisis This Is Creating
The Credit-Deposit Gap: Two Decades of Context
Banks operate on a simple funding model. They take in deposits from savers and lend that money out to borrowers. The interest rate differential between what they pay depositors and what they charge borrowers is their primary source of income. This model works smoothly when deposit growth and credit growth move together.
Between March 2022 and late 2024, that balance broke down in a way that had not been seen in over two decades. Credit growth exceeded deposit growth every single fortnight from March 2022 onward, creating a widening gap. At its peak in early 2024, this gap reached 700 basis points: credit growing at 17.4 percent year-on-year as of June 28, 2024, while deposits grew at only 11.1 percent. The RBI itself described this as the worst deposit crunch in two decades.
“Banks are taking greater recourse to short-term non-retail deposits and other instruments of liability to meet the incremental credit demand. This may potentially expose the banking system to structural liquidity issues.”
RBI Governor Shaktikanta Das, August 8, 2024The same governor had also issued a direct warning in July 2024, urging banks to be watchful of the lag between credit and deposit growth and advising that credit growth should not exceed deposit growth. He warned explicitly that the financial system could be exposed to “structural liquidity issues” if the situation persisted.
How the Gap Evolved Through 2024 and Into 2025
The RBI’s intervention worked partially. Risk weights on unsecured loans were raised in November 2023. Banks were directed to reduce their elevated loan-to-deposit ratios. HDFC Bank, India’s largest private bank, deliberately slowed its loan book growth to reduce its high credit-deposit ratio. These actions, combined with higher deposit rates offered by banks, began to narrow the gap through late 2024.
By the fortnight ending November 1, 2024, deposit growth and credit growth were almost at par for the first time in 30 months: credit at 11.9 percent, deposits at 11.83 percent. But the truce did not last. By December 12, 2025, deposit growth had slipped to 9.7 percent year-on-year while credit growth picked up to 11.7 percent, reopening a 200-basis-point gap.
| Period | Credit Growth (YoY) | Deposit Growth (YoY) | Gap (bps) | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Start of 2024 | ~17%+ | ~10% | ~700 bps | Worst in two decades |
| June 28, 2024 | 17.4% | 11.1% | 630 bps | Still severely elevated |
| September 6, 2024 | 13.3% | 11.0%+ | ~200 bps | Narrowing |
| November 1, 2024 | 11.9% | 11.83% | ~7 bps | Near parity |
| December 12, 2025 | 11.7% | 9.7% | 200 bps | Gap re-opened |
Source: RBI State of the Economy Reports (monthly RBI Bulletin); RBI fortnightly banking data releases. URL: rbi.org.in
The structural problem behind the cyclical data: Banks managed to narrow the gap through regulatory interventions in 2024. But the December 2025 data showed the gap re-opening. The underlying structural driver, households consistently preferring mutual funds over FDs, has not changed. It has accelerated. Banks cannot solve a structural problem with a cyclical response. Offering higher FD rates is the cyclical response. It works temporarily. But as long as equity markets deliver superior long-term returns and SIP infrastructure makes investing frictionless, the pressure on deposits will persist.
Part IVThe NIM Squeeze: How Banks Are Caught in a Trap
Banks facing a deposit shortfall have one obvious tool: raise FD rates to attract more money. Many did exactly this through 2023 and 2024. The problem is that higher FD rates directly compress the Net Interest Margin (NIM), which is the difference between the interest rate a bank earns on loans and the rate it pays on deposits. NIM is the primary driver of bank profitability.
Ashish Gupta, CIO at Axis Mutual Fund, said in September 2024: “You will see earnings growth for the banks slow down” as a result of the credit-deposit gap and the rate environment. He specifically flagged that future RBI rate cuts would have a negative impact on banks’ profit margins, since deposit rates adjust more slowly than lending rates when rates fall.
In 2024-25, banks lent Rs 18.11 trillion in net new credit, down from Rs 27.56 trillion in FY2024. They mobilised Rs 20.99 trillion in new deposits, down from Rs 24.31 trillion in FY24. Credit growth moderated sharply to 11 percent in FY25 from 20.2 percent in FY24, partly because constrained deposits limited banks’ ability to grow their loan books aggressively.
The Certificate of Deposit Dependence
When retail deposits lag credit demand, banks turn to wholesale funding. Certificates of Deposit (CDs), which are short-term borrowings from the money market, became a major funding source for banks through 2023 and 2024. The RBI specifically cautioned banks against over-reliance on these instruments, warning that it “may potentially expose the banking system to structural liquidity issues.”
The problem with CD dependence is maturity mismatch. Banks borrow short-term through CDs and lend long-term through home loans, infrastructure loans, and term loans to corporates. If the short-term funding market tightens or rates spike, the bank faces a funding crisis even if its underlying loan book is healthy. This is not a theoretical risk. It is exactly the mechanism that amplified banking crises in other markets.
What banks have done in response: Multiple banks hiked deposit rates. State-owned banks that lagged private peers in deposit mobilisation began tapping the domestic bond market, raising funds through infrastructure bonds to support long-term lending. Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman and RBI Governor Das both pressed banks to conduct special deposit mobilisation drives. The RBI also encouraged banks to leverage their branch networks more aggressively for retail deposit collection, rather than relying on bulk corporate deposits.
Part VThe Household Savings Paradox
More Money in Markets, Less Money Saved Overall
Here is the part of this story that rarely gets discussed. The mutual fund boom is happening simultaneously with a significant decline in overall household savings in India. India’s gross domestic savings rate fell from 34.6 percent of GDP in 2011-12 to 29.7 percent in 2022-23, a four-decade low. Household net financial savings declined from 7.4 percent of GDP in 2012 to 5 percent in FY2023, before a modest recovery to 5.1 percent in FY2024 according to RBI’s Annual Report 2024-25.
Household financial savings as a share of GDP halved from 11 percent in FY2020-21 to 5.3 percent in FY2023-24, according to RBI Handbook data.
These two facts appear contradictory at first glance. How can mutual fund inflows be at record highs while household savings are declining? The answer is threefold.
First, rising household financial liabilities are eating into net savings. Households are borrowing more for homes, vehicles, and consumer goods. The gross financial savings number looks better than the net number because of this debt accumulation on the other side of the balance sheet.
Second, the shift from physical to financial savings distorts comparisons. Indian households traditionally saved heavily in physical assets: gold, real estate, and livestock. As more savings flow into mutual funds rather than gold or property, financial savings rise on paper, but total savings including physical assets may be flat or declining.
Third, consumption is genuinely replacing saving for a segment of the population. Rising aspirations, easy consumer credit, and an expanding services economy have increased household spending. Some of what previously became an FD now becomes an EMI.
The Middle-Class Squeeze in Practice
Consider a household earning Rs 1.2 lakh per month in a tier-1 city in 2026. Monthly expenses including rent, children’s school fees, EMIs on a car and home loan, groceries, and utilities leave roughly Rs 25,000-30,000 in monthly surplus. Of this, perhaps Rs 10,000 goes into a SIP. The remainder may cover a small FD or simply sit in a savings account. This household’s financial savings are real and growing, thanks to the SIP. But as a percentage of gross income, the savings rate is far lower than a comparable household earning Rs 1.2 lakh in 2010 would have saved. The absolute number of mutual fund investors is growing. The depth of savings relative to income is not keeping pace.
Part VIThe Infrastructure Funding Risk
The practical consequence of a deposit crunch is not just a number on a spreadsheet. India needs to fund an enormous infrastructure build-out through the 2020s: roads, railways, ports, power plants, urban water systems, and digital infrastructure. Much of this lending comes from banks. A bank that cannot mobilise long-term deposits cheaply is a bank that finds it harder and more expensive to lend long-term to infrastructure projects.
When deposit costs rise, lending rates for infrastructure projects rise with them. Higher financing costs slow down project viability assessments. Some projects that would be financially viable at a 9 percent lending rate are not viable at 11 percent. The economic multiplier from infrastructure investment then contracts.
India’s corporate bond market, while growing, is not yet deep enough to fully substitute for bank lending in infrastructure finance. Most infrastructure projects in India still depend on bank credit for a significant share of their funding. The government has encouraged state-owned banks to issue infrastructure bonds to raise long-term money outside the deposit route. Some have done so. But this solution is partial, more expensive than retail deposits, and does not address the underlying structural shift in household savings behaviour.
The systemic risk in plain terms: A household choosing a SIP over an FD is making a perfectly rational personal finance decision. The long-term returns on equity mutual funds have historically exceeded FD rates after tax and inflation. But seven crore households simultaneously making this rational individual decision creates a collective outcome that strains the banking system’s ability to fund corporate India’s growth. Individual rationality does not always produce systemic optimality. This is the paradox at the heart of the FD-versus-mutual-fund debate.
Part VIIIs the FD Actually Dying?
The answer, stated precisely, is: no, but it is losing its dominance.
Total bank deposits stood at Rs 218 trillion (Rs 218 lakh crore) in mid-November 2024, a large and growing absolute number. Deposits grew 19.9 percent year-on-year through much of 2024. The FD is not disappearing. It is losing its share of incremental savings. That is a different and more nuanced problem than the headline “death of the FD” narrative suggests.
Certain demographics remain strongly committed to fixed deposits. Senior citizens, retirees, and conservative middle-aged savers in tier-2 and tier-3 cities continue to prefer the guaranteed return and capital safety of FDs. Post office time deposits and PPF have also been growing steadily, as has the Senior Citizens Savings Scheme, suggesting that the shift to equities is concentrated in younger and urban demographics.
The real question is not whether FDs are dying but whether the incremental flow of new household savings is shifting decisively away from bank deposits. The data from the RBI Bulletin and AMFI confirms that it is, and the pace of that shift is accelerating.
| Savings Instrument | Who It Still Works For | Growth Trend |
|---|---|---|
| Bank Fixed Deposits | Retirees, conservative savers, risk-averse households, short-horizon savers | Absolute AUM still growing, share of incremental savings declining |
| Equity Mutual Funds (via SIP) | Urban salaried middle class, age 25-45, long-term savers, digitally savvy investors | Fastest growing savings segment. 61 consecutive months of positive net inflows. |
| Post Office Deposits and PPF | Government employees, rural savers, those seeking sovereign guarantee | Steadily growing. Over Rs 12 lakh crore in combined AUM (FY24). |
| Direct equities | Younger, higher-risk-tolerance investors with active trading interest | Demat accounts crossed 18 crore in 2025. |
| Gold (physical and ETF) | Risk hedge buyers, traditional households, south India particularly | Physical gold stable. Gold ETF growing rapidly from small base. |
Part VIIIWhere This Leads
What Banks Must Do
RBI Governor Das identified the direction clearly: banks need to mobilise household savings through innovative products and by leveraging their branch networks, rather than depending on bulk corporate deposits or short-term CDs. The branch network of Indian public sector banks, which reaches deep into rural and semi-urban India, is an underutilised asset for deposit mobilisation in geographies where mutual fund penetration is still low.
Banks also need to compete on convenience and returns more aggressively. Several smaller banks have already moved toward offering FDs with flexible tenures, step-up rates, and digital-first interfaces. The State Bank of India has guided loan book growth of 14 to 16 percent while targeting deposit growth of 13 to 15 percent, signalling a conscious effort to keep the gap manageable.
What the RBI Is Watching
The RBI is not opposed to the mutual fund boom. It is a sign of financial deepening and greater household engagement with capital markets. What the RBI is managing is the speed of the transition. A gradual shift from bank deposits to mutual funds is healthy. A rapid and large-scale shift creates asset-liability mismatches in the banking system that can amplify credit cycles and stress liquidity in periods of market volatility.
The LCR (Liquidity Coverage Ratio) norms, tightened from April 2025, require banks to hold more liquid assets against potential outflows. The revised run-off rates for retail deposits in digital banking apply a higher liquidity burden to banks, reflecting the RBI’s view that digitally accessible deposits are more volatile than traditional branch deposits. This regulatory tightening is a direct response to the structural shift in household savings behaviour.
What This Means for the Individual Saver
For the saver reading this, the personal finance calculus is not changing. Equity mutual funds, particularly for long investment horizons of five-plus years, have historically outperformed bank FDs after adjusting for inflation and tax. SIPs remain an efficient, disciplined vehicle for wealth creation. This article is not an argument against mutual funds.
What it is, is an argument for awareness. When you shift from an FD to a SIP, you are not just making a personal finance decision. You are participating in a structural change that is reshaping how India’s banks fund corporate credit. Understanding the system-level implications of individually rational decisions is not a reason to act differently. It is a reason to understand your role in the broader economy more clearly.
Frequently Asked Questions
Bank deposit growth has slowed despite elevated FD rates because the competition for household savings has intensified. For every Rs 100 households put in bank deposits in FY2024-25, they invested Rs 45.20 in mutual funds and equities, more than double the previous year’s ratio of Rs 21.20, according to the RBI November 2025 Bulletin. Even with 7-7.5 percent FD rates on offer, equity mutual funds have delivered higher post-tax, post-inflation returns over longer time horizons. The ease of investing through SIPs via smartphones has removed the friction that previously channelled savings into FDs by default. Banks are also competing with post office schemes and PPF, which offer sovereign-backed returns and are growing steadily.
At its worst in early 2024, the gap between credit growth and deposit growth in Indian banks reached approximately 700 basis points: credit growing at 17.4 percent year-on-year while deposits grew at 11.1 percent as of June 28, 2024. RBI Governor Shaktikanta Das himself described this as creating structural liquidity risks, confirming the severity of the gap. RBI Governor Shaktikanta Das warned publicly that this could expose the banking system to “structural liquidity issues.” When deposits lag credit, banks must borrow short-term from wholesale markets through Certificates of Deposit to fund long-term loans. This creates a maturity mismatch: borrowing short and lending long. If wholesale funding markets tighten, the resulting stress can amplify into a broader credit crunch even if the underlying loan books are healthy. The gap narrowed significantly by late 2024 through regulatory interventions but re-opened to approximately 200 basis points by December 2025.
Both are happening simultaneously, which is what makes this situation complex. India’s gross domestic savings rate fell from 34.6 percent of GDP in 2011-12 to 29.7 percent in 2022-23, a four-decade low, according to RBI data. Household financial savings as a share of GDP halved from 11 percent in FY2020-21 to 5.3 percent in FY2023-24, per RBI Handbook data. At the same time, net household financial savings showed a modest recovery to 5.1 percent of Gross National Disposable Income in FY2023-24, up from a multi-year low the prior year, as per RBI Annual Report 2024-25. The complete picture is that some households are genuinely saving less due to higher consumption, rising EMIs, and physical asset accumulation, while others are shifting from bank deposits and gold to equity mutual funds. Both trends are running concurrently and are often conflated in media coverage of the “savings crisis.”
Indirectly, yes. Banks remain the primary source of long-term credit for infrastructure projects in India. When deposit growth lags credit demand, banks face higher funding costs, which they pass on through higher lending rates. Higher lending rates raise the cost of capital for infrastructure projects, reducing the viability of projects that require long-term, low-cost financing. Some state-owned banks have compensated by issuing infrastructure bonds to raise long-term capital outside the deposit route, but this is more expensive than stable retail deposits. India’s corporate bond market, while growing, is not yet deep enough to fully substitute for bank credit in infrastructure finance. The RBI has highlighted this chain of consequences specifically as a reason why the deposit mobilisation challenge has systemic implications beyond individual bank profitability.
This depends entirely on your investment horizon, risk tolerance, liquidity needs, and tax situation. FDs offer capital safety, guaranteed returns, and defined maturity, making them suitable for short-term goals (under three years), emergency funds, and investors who cannot afford any capital loss. Equity mutual funds through SIPs are suited to long-term wealth creation (five-plus years) where the volatility of short-term market movements is smoothed out and compounding works in your favour. Historically, equity mutual funds have outperformed FDs over 10-year periods after adjusting for inflation and post-tax returns. However, past performance does not guarantee future returns. A balanced approach, keeping three to six months of expenses in FDs as an emergency fund while directing long-term savings toward diversified equity funds, is the approach most financial planners recommend for salaried middle-income households. Neither instrument is universally superior in all circumstances.
The War for Your Wallet Has a Winner So Far, But No Final Score
The mutual fund industry has won the last decade’s battle for the Indian household’s incremental savings. The numbers are unambiguous. Monthly SIP inflows have gone from Rs 3,122 crore to Rs 31,002 crore. The ratio of mutual fund investments to bank deposits has more than doubled in a single year. Banks are facing a structural problem that intermittent regulation and higher FD rates can only partially address.
But this is not simply a story about one financial product defeating another. It is about a deeper change in how India relates to risk, return, and the future. A generation that watched its parents lock money away in 7 percent FDs for decades, then saw equity markets deliver 14 to 16 percent CAGR over fifteen years, has drawn rational conclusions. Add to this the smartphone, UPI, AMFI’s marketing engine, and an army of finfluencers, and you have the conditions for a structural shift that is unlikely to reverse.
What banks and regulators are managing is the transition risk: the danger that a rapid shift in savings behaviour outpaces the financial system’s ability to find alternative funding mechanisms for credit. If the transition is gradual, banks adapt, corporate bond markets deepen, and credit continues to flow. If the shift accelerates further or a market correction shakes SIP confidence suddenly, the liquidity pressure on banks could become acute in a way that has system-wide consequences.
For you, as an individual saver, the rational decision today may be a SIP. For the banking system that lends to the company that employs you, the collective consequence of that same rational decision is worth understanding. Both realities are true at the same time.
Disclaimer: This article is for informational and educational purposes only and is current as of June 8, 2026. Nothing in this article constitutes investment advice. Consult a SEBI-registered investment adviser before making personal financial decisions.
