Kolkata: Eschew hopes of quick gains, buying-in-the-morning-selling-in-the-afternoon temptation, have faith in India’s youth and their capacity to adopt technology to multiply your wealth — that’s the succinct message Ashish Kumar Chauhan, MD and CEO, NSE delivered from the platform of Money9 Financial Freedom Summit 2025 on Wednesday.
With clinical precision Chauhan laid pout the Dos and Don’ts of investment, “Don’t try to buy in the morning and sell in the afternoon with a hope to make profits. That’s not investing. Don’t believe in tips and don’t believe in WhatsApp advices,” said the veteran equity market administrator.
Trust the basis of boom in retail investors
Speaking on how “How increasing participation of retail investors is shaping the Indian economy” the NSE boss pointed out that there are more than 11 crore investors in the Indian stock market. Incidentally, it is a number that is just behind the total population of just about a dozen countries in the world. Chauhan also highlighted another achievement of the Indian retail investment journey — 25% of the total unique investors are women.
Chauhan also emphasised impressive that the numbers are, this is just the beginning. “In 15 years, we can have 50-70 crore unique investors,” he remarked. The NSE chief was of the opinion that the trust of the common people — an ordinary villager who doesn’t hesitate in trusting someone he hasn’t seen a person sitting 3,000 km away with his money — is the main capital of the Indian investment market.
The great enabler called technology
Chauhan also mentioned that technology is one of the biggest enablers and catalysts of the process of capital formation in the country. He also highlighted the example of Nandan Nilekani as one who had nothing but hard work and technology-friendliness to build a mammoth company that also made others rich. He also mentioned the names of Zomato, Swiggy and Nykaa in the same breath to illustrate how technology can be leveraged to build business and capital.
Earlier, NSE has given out numbers to highlight how there has been an explosion of equity investors in the country. On January 20, 2025, NSE exceeded 11 crore unique registered investors. What’s more significant is that fact that as many as 1 crore investors were enrolled in only the preceding five months. Further disaggregation of the numbers revealed that every day 47,000 to 73,000 new unique investors were registered consistently. The total number of accounts with NSE stood above 21 crore (clients can register with more than one trading member).
The factors driving this rapid growth in number of investors were believed to be rapid digitisation, rising investor awareness and the prolonged bull run in the Indian markets.
Quite predictably, the top three states leading the great investor march are Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh and Gujarat. Maharashtra was on top with 1.8 crore registered investors, while the most populous state Uttar Pradesh came second with 1.2 crore and Gujarat, a state with a fraction of UP’s population, with 0.98 crore investors. These three states account for as much as 36.6% of the 11 crore investors.
Standing at a time when the Indian stock market is in a corrective phase, NSE MD and CEO Ashish Kumar Chauhan made it clear on the platform of Money9 Financial Freedom Summit 2025 that long-term investing is the key to sound investing. Markets Business News – Personal Finance News, Share Market News, BSE/NSE News, Stock Exchange News Today
