The billionaire is urging households to reconsider a centuries-old investment habit: buying gold. Long viewed as a symbol of security and prosperity, the metal has traditionally absorbed a large share of family savings, but Ambani argues that greater participation in equities would allow ordinary Indians to benefit more directly from the country’s growth
Mukesh Ambani, India’s richest man, and Larry Fink, the chief executive of BlackRock, are encouraging Indian households to shift their savings from gold into equities, arguing that investments in the stock market are better positioned to benefit from the country’s long-term economic expansion.
Their appeal comes as gold prices experience heightened volatility and Indian equities struggle to gain traction. The benchmark Nifty 50 index has fallen nearly 2 percent so far this year.
A large portion of domestic savings in gold and silver “are unproductive,” Mr. Ambani said during a fireside chat with Mr. Fink on Wednesday, adding that money in the “stock market is compounding.”
The message reflects a broader effort to reshape how Indians invest. While the country remains one of the world’s largest consumers of gold, it is also undergoing a gradual financialization of household savings, with mutual funds drawing increasing interest from retail investors.
Reliance Industries, India’s largest conglomerate, partnered with BlackRock, the world’s biggest asset manager, last year to launch mutual funds in the country. Their joint venture, Jio BlackRock Asset Management, introduced its first equity fund in August and reported assets under management of 31.98 billion rupees, or about $353 million, across its equity funds by the end of December.
Consulting firm Bain & Company estimates that retail investor-driven assets in India’s mutual fund industry will grow to 300 trillion rupees, roughly $3.3 trillion, by 2035, up from 45 trillion rupees in the 2025 fiscal year.
Even so, Indian households continue to favor physical assets. Nearly 59 percent of household wealth was allocated to gold and real estate in fiscal year 2025, according to Bain, down from 66 percent a decade earlier but still a dominant share.
Speaking at the same event, Mr. Fink described the coming decades as an “era of India” and said citizens should invest in the country’s growth through capital markets.
India is expected to remain the world’s fastest-growing major economy. The International Monetary Fund projects the country will expand by 6.4 percent in 2026, compared with global growth of 3.3 percent. Large economies including Germany, Britain and Japan are forecast to grow only in the low single digits.
Drawing on BlackRock’s experience in the United States, Mr. Fink said the segment of Americans who invested in the country’s growth ended up far “better off than those who just kept all their money in a bank account.”
“Indian equity market over the next 20 years will double and triple and quadruple,” Mr. Fink told India’s The Economic Times in a separate interview, adding that he doesn’t see “gold moving that way.”
Foreign investors have been net sellers of Indian equities for more than a year, but rising domestic participation has helped keep markets in positive territory. Investments through systematic investment plans, which allow individuals to invest small sums at regular intervals, tripled to 2.89 trillion rupees, or $31.9 billion, in fiscal year 2025 from 2021, according to the Association of Mutual Funds in India.
Performance has been uneven. Over the past year, the MSCI India Index delivered a dollar return of 2.61 percent, trailing the 43.67 percent gain recorded by the MSCI Emerging Markets Index. Yet over a five-year period, Indian equities have generated nearly twice the returns of the broader emerging markets benchmark, underscoring the long-term case that advocates say favors stocks over bullion.
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