Wealth creation for freedom from future financial woes is the topmost priority of young Indians who started investing recently, mostly in the wake of difficulties due to the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, according to a survey by online investment platform Groww. The survey was conducted in India with over 20,000 respondents between the age of 18 to 30 years in the first week of August.
Interestingly, when it comes to influencing investment decisions, the survey revealed that friends and colleagues were the most influential for 30.6% of respondents. News and social media influencers were most influential for 27.4% and 23.4% of respondents respectively. Family and investment agents/advisors were the least influential with only 13.9% and 4.6% respondents respectively.
The survey revealed as many as 59.8% of the respondents feel wealth creation to secure their future expenses and retirement is the topmost priority. About 9.5% of respondents said they are investing to pursue their higher education while 30.7% have invested to fulfill their evolving lifestyle needs such as travel and other personal goals.
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A large number of millennials have started investing for a secure financial future during the pandemic. According to the survey, 79.3% of respondents started their investment journey less than a year ago during the pandemic. Also, about 18.3% of respondents started investing in the past 3 years. Only 2.4% of respondents have been investing for more than 3 years and consider themselves as experienced investors.
The survey also found that 40.2% of Indian youth were willing to invest more now as compared to the pre-pandemic times. As many as 26.6% of respondents said the pandemic had no impact on their investments decisions. While 25.8% of the respondents reduced their investments due to the reduction in their income. The rest of the respondents felt that risk appetite had decreased due to the pandemic.
Meaning of financial independence
According to the survey, 52.9% of the respondents invest to ensure their financial security as well as their family’s, while 37.3% said that financial independence for them means having the power to decide how they would like to live their lives. About 10% of respondents said that securing enough wealth for early retirement signifies financial independence.
The survey also revealed that the lack of financial knowledge was the main reason for low investments, while low-risk appetite is one of the challenges for making the investment decision.
Commenting on the findings, Harsh Jain, COO, and Co-Founder of Groww said, “The most promising highlight for us is that India’s young investors today are focussed on wealth creation. It is evident in the survey that today’s youth has a high appetite for learning and are very educated about available investment options that will help them make the right decisions in their journey towards being financially independent.”
