BlackRock Chairman and CEO Larry Fink speaks to CNBC on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York City, USA, on January 15, 2026.
Brendan McDiarmid | Reuters
black rock CEO Larry Fink and Reliance Industries Chairman Mukesh Ambani wants Indians to invest in the domestic stock market rather than gold.
The advice comes at a time when volatility in the yellow metal is rising while Indian stocks are underperforming. nifty 50 It has fallen nearly 2% since the beginning of this year.
Speaking to Fink on Wednesday, Ambani said that much of the country’s gold and silver savings are “unproductive”, adding: “Money in the stock market is compounding.”
Reliance Industries, India’s largest conglomerate, and BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, partnered last year to launch mutual funds in India.
Jio BlackRock Asset Management launched its first equity fund in August last year and had assets under management of 31.98 billion rupees ($353 million) across equity funds as of the end of December.
Indians are some of the world’s largest buyers of gold, but the country is increasingly financializing their savings, with mutual funds becoming increasingly popular.
So far this year, Nifty 50 is back
Global consulting firm Bain & Company estimates that retail-led assets in India’s mutual fund industry will grow to 300 trillion rupees ($3.3 trillion) by 2035 from 45 trillion rupees in 2025.
Indians still hold the majority of their wealth in gold and real estate, accounting for nearly 59% in fiscal 2025, the Bain report said. The share of physical assets in 2015 was 66%.
Fink said at the event that the next 20-25 years will be “India’s era” and Indians will need to invest in their country’s growth through capital markets.
According to the International Monetary Fund, India is expected to remain the world’s fastest growing economy, with the country expected to grow by 6.4% in 2026. In contrast, the IMF predicts global economic growth in 2026 to be 3.3%. Major countries such as Germany, the UK and Japan are expected to grow in the low single digits.
Fink also said that based on BlackRock’s experience in the U.S., people who have invested in U.S. growth are “much better off than people who just keep all their money in bank accounts.”
“Over the next 20 years, the Indian stock market will double, triple, quadruple,” Fink told India’s Economic Times in a separate interview, adding that he didn’t think “gold will behave that way.”
Foreign investors have been net sellers of Indian stocks for over a year, but the market’s ability to remain in positive territory is slowing due to increased domestic participation in Indian stocks.
Investments through systematic investment plans, which invest single amounts at regular intervals, tripled to 2.89 trillion rupees ($31.9 billion) in fiscal 2025 from 2021, according to data from the Association of Mutual Funds of India.
The MSCI India Index’s dollar return over the past year was 2.61%, which pales in comparison to the MSCI Emerging Markets Index’s 43.67%. However, over the past five years, the Indian index has delivered nearly double the return of the broader emerging market index.
