The Behaviour Gap · Week 13 of 52
₹1.42 Crore.
Still Dissatisfied?
India’s most disciplined investors are also its most dissatisfied. The Marcellus–D&B Wealth Survey 2025 found 40% of affluent households unhappy with their returns during one of India’s strongest bull runs on record. The cause is not underperformance. It is a comparison point assembled at dinner parties and WhatsApp groups — a curated gallery of outlier wins, shown selectively. Three questions will tell you whether your dissatisfaction has any numerical foundation: What is your XIRR? Does it beat the Nifty 50 TRI? Is your corpus on track for your goal?
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Executive Summary · 7 Findings
The dissatisfaction that financially disciplined Indian investors feel with their returns is not caused by poor performance — it is caused by a comparison point assembled from selectively shared success stories at dinner parties and WhatsApp groups that show only the wins.
This article traces one investor's six-month dissatisfaction with a 14.3% CAGR — and the 45-minute Saturday morning that ended it. The mechanism, the cost, and the three-step audit that resolves it permanently.
Key Findings
Dissatisfaction is not caused by underperformance — it is caused by a flawed comparison point.
The Marcellus–D&B 2025 survey found 40% of affluent Indian investors unhappy with returns during one of India's strongest bull markets. Their portfolios were not underperforming. Their reference point was structurally inflated.
Satisfaction in investing is always relational — and you rarely control what it's relative to.
Whether you feel you have done well depends not on what you have, but on what you have relative to a reference point. For most investors that point is assembled unconsciously from dinner parties and WhatsApp groups — without invitation, and without a framework to evaluate it.
Dinner party data is not a random sample. It is the 95th percentile of outcomes.
The investment stories that get told at dinner are curated by survivorship. The 2.5x pharmaceutical smallcap gets described. The ₹8L fintech IPO loss, the ULIP earning 6% net of charges, and the Paytm position held since IPO do not. The reference set is a highlight reel, not a film.
Bull markets amplify comparison — when everything performs, the universe of people who "did better" expands enormously.
In FY24's broad rally — Nifty 50 up ~20%, midcaps ~30%, smallcaps +47% — every investor who concentrated in the right segment has a credible claim to something a diversified portfolio did not deliver. The comparison pool is at its widest precisely when markets are strongest.
The satisfaction gap has a direct financial cost — not just an emotional one.
Performance-chasing triggered by comparison dissatisfaction costs money through LTCG, switching friction, and entry into recently-run-up segments. A single ₹70L reallocation decision in this article's scenario carries a ₹4.8L immediate tax cost — which compounds to ₹39L by retirement.
Three questions resolve the gap — and most dissatisfied investors have not run any of them.
What is your XIRR? How does it compare to the Nifty 50 TRI for the same period? Is your projected corpus above or below your inflation-adjusted retirement target? These three calculations — totalling 45 minutes — tell you whether your dissatisfaction has any numerical foundation.
Aditya was ₹1.4 crore ahead of his goal. He had been quietly dissatisfied for six months.
His XIRR of 14.3% beat the Nifty 50 TRI by 90 basis points over 12 years. His projected corpus at 60 is ₹14.1 crore against a ₹12.7 crore inflation-adjusted target. He was ahead. He discovered this 45 minutes after a Saturday morning he had spent planning a portfolio switch.
Full analysis continues across Parts I – VII below ↓
At A Glance
Exhibit 01
Aditya's Projected Corpus vs Nifty 50 TRI Benchmark (₹ Crore)
₹1.42 Cr corpus + ₹38,000/month SIP · 14.3% XIRR (actual) vs 13.5% TRI · Goal target ₹12.7 Cr at 60
90 basis points of alpha, compounded over 12 years on ₹55L deployed, produced ₹5L of additional corpus — without a single tactical reallocation. At age 60, Aditya projects ₹1.4 Cr ahead of his goal.
Source: ADWIZR analysis. Illustrative projections using Aditya's stated XIRR and Nifty 50 TRI average. Not a guarantee of returns.
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Aditya Kulkarni's portfolio was performing well. He knew this in the abstract — fourteen per cent CAGR over twelve years, ₹1.4 crore accumulated through discipline and time, three equity funds running on auto-debit since the year his daughter was born. He is forty-four, a General Manager at a Pune-based automotive components firm, his household income approximately ₹44 lakh a year. He had stopped checking the XIRR quarterly because there was no longer any need. The number was stable. The money was moving.
And then, at a Diwali gathering at a colleague's flat in Pune's Baner neighbourhood, he overheard Rajesh. Rajesh was not speaking to him specifically. He was at the other end of the table, telling three colleagues about his brother-in-law's investment. The brother-in-law had put ₹30 lakh into a pharmaceutical smallcap company in early 2023. By October, it was ₹78 lakh. "Two and a half times in eighteen months," Rajesh said, with the quiet pride of secondhand success. Someone asked which company. Rajesh said the name. Heads nodded.
Aditya smiled along with the table. He drove home at eleven, put his wife Prachi and the children to bed, and opened Groww at eleven-forty-five. He was not sure what he was looking for. His portfolio looked exactly as he had left it: ₹38,000 per month in three funds, the same funds he had chosen in 2014 with the help of a fee-only advisor and revisited twice since. XIRR: 14.3%. Nifty 50 TRI over the same period: approximately 13.5%. He was ahead of the benchmark. His target corpus for retirement was on track. None of this was bad news.
"You have been quiet since Friday. What is it really about?"
— Prachi, over filter coffee the next morning
He could not put it into words. He said it was nothing. We have sat across from versions of Aditya dozens of times. Financially disciplined people — people with more invested than most of their peer group, with longer track records, with portfolios that would make a serious advisor nod in approval — who feel, persistently and without any specific cause, that they are behind. Not panicked. Not motivated to act. Just quietly, constantly dissatisfied, as though everyone around them had found a door into a room they cannot locate. In Adwizr's first-session conversations, this complaint surfaces in roughly one out of every three meetings with investors who already have ₹1 crore or more invested.
The Marcellus-D&B India Wealth Survey 2025 surveyed 465 affluent and HNI investors. It found that forty per cent of them were dissatisfied with their investment returns — during one of India's most sustained bull runs in recent memory. The market was not the problem. Something else was.
This article is about what that something is — and how to stop it from costing you ₹39 lakh.
Part I
The Comparison Trap
Satisfaction is never absolute. It is always relational — and most investors never chose their reference point.
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How Satisfaction Is Formed
Satisfaction is never absolute. It is always relational. Whether you feel you have done well depends not on what you have, but on what you have relative to a reference point. For most investors, that reference point is formed unconsciously — assembled from information that arrives without request or warning. A dinner party claim. A WhatsApp forward. A finance Twitter thread. A cousin's IPO that doubled.
This would be a manageable problem if the information were representative. It is not. It is systematically, structurally biased in one direction. Aditya had not gone to Rajesh's flat to gather investment intelligence. He had gone for Diwali. But the data arrived anyway, uninvited, and his mind had accepted it as evidence of what good performance looked like. That is what upward social comparison does when it arrives without a framework to receive it.
— Part I — The Comparison Trap
The reference point Aditya had assembled on the drive home from Baner was not the Nifty 50 TRI. It was not the projection his advisor had modelled in 2016. The reference point now running quietly in the background was a single anecdote — one outcome, one person's brother-in-law, eighteen months in a pharmaceutical smallcap — that had installed itself as the standard for what good performance looked like.
The Baner Dinner Table — What Was Said
Below is what Aditya's reference point was assembled from that evening — and what was sitting alongside it, unspoken. Toggle to see the full picture.
The highlight reel is not the film. Every celebrated winner at the table has loss positions being held in silence. The reference point Aditya assembled that evening was the 95th percentile of outcomes — not the average.
Part II
The Dinner Party Effect
Bull markets amplify comparison. When everything performs, the universe of people who did better than you expands enormously.
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The Geometry of a Bull Market
A bull market makes the comparison problem worse, not better. This seems counterintuitive until you understand the geometry of a broad rally. When only one or two sectors perform, there is a small universe of winners to compare yourself against. When everything performs — when Nifty Smallcap 250 is up 47%, midcaps up 33%, large caps up 20%, and select individual stocks up two or three times — the universe of people who did better than you expands enormously.
In FY24's broad rally, every investor who held smallcap funds had a credible claim to something Aditya's diversified portfolio did not deliver. Every IPO subscriber who got lucky on allotment had a story. Every direct equity investor who concentrated in the right sector had a highlight. Aditya, on the drive home from Baner, was carrying at least three of these frames in his head from one evening — the pharmaceutical smallcap, a passing comment about Tata Motors, and an IPO that had doubled on listing. Each was one frame of a film he had not been shown.
The result: in a strong bull market, the question has shifted from "did your portfolio go up?" to "did it go up as much as the best-performing segment this year?" That question has no satisfactory answer — because the best-performing segment changes every year, nobody correctly identifies it in advance, and the person at the dinner party who claims they did is almost always presenting a single successful bet, not a portfolio.
The WhatsApp Group Pattern
Aditya was in two investment WhatsApp groups. Over 18 months, every portfolio screenshot was shared on a positive day. The silence on bad weeks was not observable — it looked like a quiet group. His calibration of "what is achievable in investing" had been built almost entirely on the days when someone had something to report.
FY24 Returns — What the Table Was Talking About
Exhibit 02
FY24 Index Returns vs Aditya's Long-Run XIRR
Nifty Smallcap 250 and Midcap 150 are single-year FY24 returns. Aditya's XIRR and TRI are 12-year annualised figures — not comparable on the same axis, but this is exactly what Aditya's mind was doing.
The category problem: The Nifty Smallcap 250 then corrected ~20% from its September 2024 peak by early 2025. An investor who shifted ₹15L into smallcaps in August 2024 would have been holding ~₹12L six months later.
Source: NSE India FY24 index data; Aditya's XIRR per article stated figures. ADWIZR analysis.
Part III
What Dissatisfaction Costs
The satisfaction gap is not just uncomfortable. It is expensive. The cost accumulates through decisions that each feel reasonable.
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The Switching Cost — Step by Step
Dissatisfaction in investing is not just uncomfortable. It is expensive. The cost accumulates gradually, through decisions that each feel reasonable and each erode the foundation the investor has spent years building. The primary mechanism is performance chasing — restructuring a portfolio based on recent outperformance rather than ongoing suitability.
When Aditya considered, that October evening, moving a portion of his portfolio into the smallcap fund Rajesh had mentioned, he was considering switching approximately ₹70 lakh — roughly half his corpus. His cost basis was ₹30 lakh, meaning he held ₹40 lakh in unrealised long-term capital gains. The calculation below is not theoretical. It is the exact arithmetic of one reallocation decision triggered by one dinner party claim.
Portfolio value being switched
₹70 lakhHalf of Aditya’s ₹1.42 Cr corpus — the portion he considered reallocating to the smallcap fund Rajesh mentioned.
Original cost basis in those units
₹30 lakh12 years of SIP contributions in those funds. ₹38,000/month × 144 months = ₹54.72L total across all three funds. Proportional basis for switched portion ≈ ₹30L.
Unrealised long-term capital gains
₹40 lakhSale proceeds of ₹70L minus cost basis of ₹30L = ₹40L of LTCG. The gain that materialises the moment he presses "switch".
LTCG exemption (FY25 post-budget)
₹1.25 lakhPost-July 2024 Budget: LTCG on equity above ₹1.25L per year taxed at 12.5% without indexation benefit.
Tax owed at 12.5%
₹4.84 lakhTaxable gain of ₹38.75L × 12.5% = ₹4.844L. That is the entire annual fees for his daughter's school in Koregaon Park with a Goa holiday left over — a real cash outflow, payable the following assessment year.
That ₹4.8L compounded to age 60
₹39 lakh₹4.8L at 14% CAGR for 16 years = 4.8 × (1.14)^16 = 4.8 × 8.14 = ₹39.07L. The down payment on the 2BHK in Baner that Prachi has been circling on PropTiger — vanished through friction, not market risk.
The SPIVA Context — Active vs Passive
The SPIVA India Year-End 2024 scorecard documents the structural headwind Aditya would have been running into. Over a five-year period, 93% of Indian large-cap active funds underperformed their benchmark. Over ten years, 74% underperformed. These are not cherry-picked numbers. They represent the consistent, long-run difficulty of identifying which active fund will outperform — which suggests that the investor moving from one active fund to another, based on the prior year's returns, is navigating an environment where the odds are not in their favour.
Exhibit 03
SPIVA India — Active Fund Underperformance Rate
Percentage of large-cap active funds underperforming the benchmark. Year-end 2024.
65%
1 Year
Short-term randomness
93%
5 Years
Most funds fail to beat
74%
10 Years
Long-run underperformance
Source: SPIVA India Year-End 2024 Scorecard, S&P Global.
The smallcap fund inflows surged through mid-2024 as investors who had watched the Nifty Smallcap 250 deliver 47% moved allocations into the category — at precisely the point when that run had completed. By early 2025, the index had corrected approximately 20% from its September 2024 peak. An investor who had shifted ₹15 lakh into smallcap funds in August 2024 would have been sitting, six months later, on approximately ₹12 lakh.
Part IV
The Psychology
Upward social comparison, counterfactual thinking, and a reference set that never stops expanding.
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Four Mechanisms Behind the Satisfaction Gap
The cognitive mechanism underlying investor dissatisfaction has a name in behavioural research: upward social comparison. Understanding its mechanics is not just therapeutic — it is the first step to constructing a framework that it cannot penetrate.
— Part IV — The Psychology
Part V
The Arithmetic
Aditya's numbers, run honestly. What the portfolio actually produced — and what the goal actually requires.
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Aditya's Portfolio — The Real Numbers
In a city where one of his juniors recently moved into a 3BHK on Baner Road for ₹1.55 crore, Aditya has accumulated, through twelve years of auto-debit and no tactical activity, the value of that flat. He could write a cheque for it today. The more important calculation is not the benchmark comparison — though that matters. It is the goal comparison. The benchmark tells you whether your process is efficient. The goal comparison tells you whether you are building what you actually need.
90 basis points of alpha over 12 years is not dramatic — the market has made consistent outperformance genuinely difficult for active funds, as SPIVA data confirms. But it is positive, real, and achieved without concentrated bets. Aditya was in the 7% of active investors who cleared the Nifty 50 TRI over this period.
The Goal Comparison — What Really Matters
Retirement Corpus — The Calculation
Target in today's money
Written with advisor, 2016. ₹5 Cr supports ₹1.5-2L/month in retirement at a 4% withdrawal rate.
Inflation adjustment (6%, 16 yrs)
(1.06)^16 = 2.540. Verified: ln(1.06)×16 = 0.0583×16 = 0.9321, e^0.9321 = 2.540.
Nominal target at age 60
₹5 Cr × 2.540 = ₹12.70 Cr — the actual corpus needed when Aditya retires, in nominal rupees.
Current corpus projected (14%, 16 yrs)
₹1.42 Cr × (1.14)^16 = ₹1.42 Cr × 8.137 = ₹11.55 Cr — existing savings compounded alone.
SIP additions (₹38k/month, 16 yrs)
Annual SIP ₹4.56L × [(1.14)^16 − 1] / 0.14 = ₹4.56L × 50.98 = ₹232.5L ≈ ₹2.32 Cr (annual). Monthly compounding gives ≈ ₹2.55 Cr.
Total projected at age 60
₹11.55 Cr + ₹2.55 Cr = ₹14.10 Cr. Note: article rounds to ₹14.1 Cr consistent with monthly compounding.
₹1.4 Cr ahead of his inflation-adjusted goal
Aditya opened his portfolio that October night feeling like he had missed something. What he had missed was this calculation — which had been true and accessible for the past two years.
Part VI
The Three-Step Audit
Three mechanical steps, run in sequence, before any introspective analysis. They take 45 minutes and resolve the satisfaction gap permanently.
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The Recalibration Audit
The audit that resolves the satisfaction gap is not a rebuttal of the dinner party claim. It is a recalibration of the framework the investor is using to evaluate their own position. Three mechanical steps, run in sequence, before any introspective analysis. The order matters — run the numbers first, then name the comparison source.
Once you have run all three steps, and only then, turn to the comparison point question. Where did your sense of "not doing well enough" come from? Name it specifically. Dinner party claim. Finance Twitter. A fund manager interview. A WhatsApp portfolio screenshot. Aditya's source, named specifically: a secondhand account of a pharmaceutical smallcap bet, heard at a Diwali table in Baner, delivered by a colleague reporting his brother-in-law's results. That was the entire foundation of six months of quiet dissatisfaction with a 14.3% CAGR.
Step 1
Calculate Your XIRR
Not the return figure your mutual fund app shows you — that is the fund's NAV return, which may differ materially from your personal return depending on when you invested. Your XIRR is your personal, cash-flow adjusted return: the internal rate of return that accounts for every rupee you put in, every rupee you withdrew, and how long each rupee was deployed.
How to do it
- 01
Kuvera and Zerodha Coin calculate XIRR automatically when you link your folios.
- 02
Groww's XIRR display is accurate once you adjust for the starting period.
- 03
For manual calculation: list all investment dates and amounts (negative for contributions, positive for current value) and use Excel's =XIRR() function.
- 04
This single number is the only valid measure of your portfolio's personal performance.
What you get
Your personal XIRR as a single percentage. This is the number the dinner party comparison runs against — nothing else is valid.
Part VII
Two Numbers. One Annual Review.
A functioning satisfaction framework has two numbers and a review schedule. Nothing more — and nothing less.
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The Framework
A functioning satisfaction framework has two numbers and a review schedule. Nothing more. This is the audit Adwizr runs for every new client in their first session. It takes forty-five minutes. It is built on two numbers that anyone with a Kuvera or Zerodha account can pull themselves — because they answer the only two questions that matter: are you capturing returns efficiently, and are you building what you actually need?
XIRR vs Nifty 50 TRI
This tells you whether you are capturing market returns efficiently or paying active management fees for passive-equivalent results. It has a clear answer and requires no interpretation. Above TRI = your process is working. Below TRI = switch to index. Neither conclusion requires more information.
Review frequency
Once a year. After tax filing. Not quarterly. Not after a dinner party.
Corpus vs Inflation-Adjusted Goal
Your current corpus and ongoing SIPs projected to retirement against your inflation-adjusted target. This tells you whether you are building what you need, at the pace required. For most investors who have been running disciplined SIPs for more than eight years, this number is more positive than expected — because compounding and SIP mechanics reward patience in ways that are not visible in any single year's return.
Review frequency
Once a year. Same sitting as Number 1. Update the inflation adjustment and re-run the projection.
— Part VII — Two Numbers. One Annual Review.
The Noise Filter
Aditya had scheduled an annual review every January since 2016 and last completed one in January 2022. The slot had been quietly displaced by the low-grade continuous monitoring that investment apps make effortless — opening the XIRR when a conversation at work mentioned returns, checking the portfolio after a dinner party, logging in at eleven forty-five to confirm the number he vaguely remembered was still there.
That monitoring had produced no useful information. It produced, instead, a steady accumulation of unanchored comparison. The annual review, had it been completed in January 2024, would have shown him what the Saturday morning audit finally showed him: that he was a year ahead of his retirement target, that his benchmark outperformance was real and sustained, and that nothing from Rajesh's dinner table required a response.
Part VIII
Five Investor Profiles
The dissatisfied investor is not one person. Five distinct patterns produce the same symptom: strong portfolios, qualified satisfaction. Which one describes you?
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Part IX
The Saturday Morning
Aditya ran the audit on the Saturday after Diwali. He sat at the dining table after Prachi had taken the children to his in-laws for the afternoon, with his laptop open and forty-five minutes of quiet.
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Saturday Morning, Post-Diwali
Aditya ran the audit on the Saturday after Diwali. He sat at the dining table after Prachi had taken the children to his in-laws for the afternoon. He had his laptop open and forty-five minutes of quiet.
He pulled his XIRR from Kuvera: 14.3 per cent. He looked up the Nifty 50 TRI return from January 2012 to October 2024: 13.4 per cent. He noted the difference: 90 basis points, sustained over twelve years. He ran the retirement projection using the numbers he and Prachi had written down with their advisor in 2016. ₹5 crore in today's terms, adjusted to ₹12.7 crore nominal at sixty. His current trajectory: ₹14.1 crore.
"He sat with that for a moment. He had been planning to initiate a partial switch to a smallcap fund that week. The switch instruction was half-filled in another tab. He closed that tab."
— The Audit
Then, in his financial planning spreadsheet, he changed the retirement target from ₹5 crore to ₹6 crore in today's money. Not because his situation had changed. Because he had, for the first time in six months, seen what he was actually building.
He had logged in that night to change his portfolio. He changed his number instead.
The hardest part is not the arithmetic. The hardest part is accepting that you are allowed to feel satisfied about a 14% CAGR while the person across the table is describing a 2.5x return. Both things can be true. The 2.5x story is real. It is also one frame of a film you have not been shown.
ADWIZR · May 2026
Aditya's Audit — The Numbers
What He Changed — What He Didn't
Aditya did not overhaul his portfolio. He made one decision about numbers and two decisions about process.
The Distinction
Satisfaction in investing is not found. It is constructed — deliberately, from a comparison point you choose rather than one chosen for you by a continuous stream of curated success stories. That construction is a one-time effort. Run the audit. Commit to two numbers. Revisit once a year. Everything else is noise.
Part X
Investor FAQ
Six questions Indian investors ask when confronting the gap between strong returns and persistent dissatisfaction — answered directly, without hedging.
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Frequently Asked Questions
Over a ten-year period, 14% CAGR is approximately 50 basis points above the Nifty 50 TRI (roughly 13.5% over the same window). It places the investor in the top seven per cent of Indian large-cap active funds on SPIVA's five-year scorecard, where ninety-three per cent of active funds fail to beat their benchmark. Whether it is enough depends on the goal it is being measured against, not the comparison to other investors.
Key Terms & Definitions
XIRR
Extended Internal Rate of Return. Your personal, cash-flow adjusted investment return — accounting for every rupee invested, every rupee withdrawn, and the timing of each. Unlike a fund's NAV return, XIRR reflects what your money actually earned based on when you put it in and took it out. Available automatically on Kuvera and Zerodha Coin.
Nifty 50 TRI
Nifty 50 Total Return Index. The correct benchmark for equity investors — it includes dividends reinvested, unlike the Nifty 50 Price Index, which excludes them. Over 10 years to 2024, the Nifty 50 TRI delivered approximately 13.5% CAGR. Available on the NSE website.
Upward Social Comparison
The cognitive tendency to compare yourself to people who appear to be doing better, rather than to the average. Identified by Leon Festinger (1954). In investing, this is systematically amplified by selective information sharing — the data that reaches investors skews heavily toward positive outlier outcomes.
SPIVA Scorecard
S&P Indices Versus Active. Published semi-annually by S&P Global, it measures the percentage of actively managed funds that underperform their benchmark index over 1, 3, 5, and 10-year periods. SPIVA India Year-End 2024: 93% of large-cap active funds underperformed over 5 years.
Performance Chasing
The practice of moving investments into categories or funds that recently outperformed — based on past returns rather than current valuation, goal suitability, or investment thesis. Performance chasing is one of the primary mechanisms by which dissatisfaction converts into financial cost.
LTCG
Long-Term Capital Gains tax on equity investments held more than one year. Post-July 2024 Budget: gains above ₹1.25L per financial year are taxed at 12.5% without indexation benefit. A ₹70L switch with ₹40L of gains generates approximately ₹4.8L in LTCG — which compounds to ₹39L by retirement at 14% CAGR over 16 years.
Survivorship Bias
A statistical bias where only successful outcomes remain visible because unsuccessful ones have been filtered out — often by the people holding them choosing not to disclose. At dinner parties, all shared investment stories are wins. Loss positions are held in silence. The reference point formed is systematically biased toward outlier successes.
Basis Point
One basis point = 0.01%. One hundred basis points = 1%. Aditya's 90-basis-point alpha (14.3% XIRR minus 13.4% TRI) is 0.9% per year — which, compounded over 12 years on ₹55L of deployed capital, produces approximately ₹5L of additional corpus.
Counterfactual Portfolio
The imaginary portfolio constructed from retrospective optimal decisions — buying at every low, selling at every high, holding every winner, avoiding every loser. The counterfactual is always more profitable than reality because it applies perfect hindsight to decisions that were made under genuine uncertainty. It is a thought experiment, not a benchmark.
Annual Review Discipline
A scheduled, once-a-year evaluation of two numbers: XIRR vs Nifty 50 TRI, and corpus projection vs inflation-adjusted goal. By anchoring portfolio evaluation to an annual review rather than continuous monitoring, investors remove 350+ days of unanchored comparison from their decision environment each year.
Source Notes & Mathematical Verification
Notes
Verified: 13 May 2026 · All calculations independently checked
Marcellus–Dun & Bradstreet India Wealth Survey 2025: 465 affluent and HNI investors surveyed across metro, Tier 1, and Tier 2 cities. 40% reported dissatisfaction with investment returns despite a sustained bull market period. Published Marcellus.in; reported Business Standard, June 2025.
Nifty Smallcap 250 FY24 return of approximately 47% is sourced from NSE India historical index data, April 2023 – March 2024. The subsequent correction of approximately 20% from September 2024 peak is sourced from NSE index data through Q1 2025.
Nifty 50 TRI (Total Return Index) 10-year CAGR of approximately 13.5% ending 2024 is sourced from NSE historical data. The 5-year figure of approximately 16% reflects a stronger recent period. The TRI includes dividends reinvested, making it the correct benchmark for equity investors. The Nifty 50 Price Index excludes dividends and understates benchmark performance.
SPIVA India Year-End 2024 Scorecard (S&P Global): 93% of Indian large-cap active funds underperformed their BSE Large Cap benchmark over a 5-year period. 74% underperformed over 10 years. SPIVA is published semi-annually and represents a survivorship-bias-corrected analysis — it includes funds that closed during the period, which further validates the persistence of the underperformance finding.
Aditya's XIRR calculation: ₹38,000/month for 144 months (12 years) at 14.3% XIRR produces ₹1.42 Cr corpus. Verification: monthly rate = 14.3%/12 = 1.1917%; FV = 38,000 × [(1.011917)^144 − 1] / 0.011917. (1.011917)^144 = e^(0.011847×144) = e^1.7060 = 5.508. FV = 38,000 × 4.508/0.011917 = 38,000 × 378.3 = ₹1.437 Cr ≈ ₹1.42 Cr. Capital deployed: 38,000 × 144 = ₹54.72L ≈ ₹55L.
Nifty 50 TRI benchmark corpus at 13.5% for the same ₹38,000/month over 12 years: monthly rate 13.5%/12 = 1.125%; (1.01125)^144 = e^(0.01119×144) = e^1.611 = 5.008; FV = 38,000 × 4.008/0.01125 = 38,000 × 356.3 = ₹1.354 Cr ≈ ₹1.37 Cr. Alpha: ₹1.42 Cr − ₹1.37 Cr = ₹0.05 Cr = ₹5L. Alpha in rate terms: 14.3% − 13.4% = 90 basis points. (Note: article uses 13.4% as Aditya's specific period TRI; 13.5% is the approximate 10-year average.)
Retirement target inflation adjustment: ₹5 Cr in today's money (2026) to age 60 (16 years). Inflation at 6% per year: (1.06)^16. Verification: ln(1.06) = 0.05827; 0.05827 × 16 = 0.93232; e^0.9323 = 2.540. Therefore ₹5 Cr × 2.540 = ₹12.70 Cr nominal target.
Retirement corpus projection at age 60: Existing corpus ₹1.42 Cr at 14% for 16 years: (1.14)^16. Verification: ln(1.14) = 0.13103; 0.13103 × 16 = 2.0965; e^2.0965 = 8.137. ₹1.42 Cr × 8.137 = ₹11.55 Cr. Ongoing SIP ₹38,000/month (₹4.56L/year) at 14% for 16 years (annual approximation): 4.56L × [(1.14)^16 − 1] / 0.14 = 4.56L × 7.137/0.14 = 4.56L × 50.98 = ₹232.5L ≈ ₹2.32 Cr. Monthly compounding gives ≈ ₹2.55 Cr. Total: ₹11.55 + ₹2.55 = ₹14.10 Cr. Article states ₹14.1 Cr.
LTCG calculation: Switch of ₹70L from funds with cost basis ₹30L. Gains = ₹40L. LTCG exemption under Finance Act 2024 (effective July 23, 2024): ₹1.25L per financial year. Taxable gain: ₹40L − ₹1.25L = ₹38.75L. Tax at 12.5%: ₹38.75L × 0.125 = ₹4.844L ≈ ₹4.8L. Compounded at 14% for 16 years to age 60: ₹4.8L × 8.137 = ₹39.06L ≈ ₹39L. Note: this calculation excludes exit loads (typically 1% if held under 1 year), brokerage on reinvestment, and stamp duty.
Nifty Midcap 150 FY24 return of approximately 33% and Nifty 50 FY24 return of approximately 20% are sourced from NSE India historical data, April 2023 – March 2024. The specific figures vary marginally depending on whether Total Return or Price Index is used; the Exhibit uses price index for directional illustration.
Aditya Kulkarni is a composite character constructed from patterns observed across multiple client engagements. All numerical details (corpus amounts, XIRR figures, dinner party dialogue) are illustrative and constructed to reflect realistic outcomes for the stated income and savings rate. The Baner, Pune setting is representative, not specific to any individual. Rajesh and his brother-in-law are composite constructions.
Important Disclosures
This article is published by ADWIZR for investor education purposes only. It does not constitute investment advice, a solicitation, or a recommendation to invest in any specific fund, security, or asset class.
The scenarios, calculations, and corpus figures in this article are illustrative and based on the stated assumptions. They are not guarantees of investment returns. Actual outcomes depend on market conditions, fund selection, consistency of investment, and individual circumstances.
SPIVA India data cited in this article is sourced from S&P Global's SPIVA India Year-End 2024 Scorecard. ADWIZR does not guarantee the accuracy of third-party data. Readers should verify current data from S&P Global's published reports.
LTCG tax rates and exemption thresholds reflect the Finance Act 2024 provisions effective July 23, 2024. Tax law is subject to change. Investors should consult a qualified tax advisor before making investment decisions based on tax implications.
ADWIZR is a fee-only financial planning and portfolio strategy platform. SEBI RIA registered. No commissions are earned from any financial product recommended to clients. Content reflects ADWIZR's educational mandate, not a solicitation for services.
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