Why out of 33.72 crore, do only 3.21 Indians invest in the stock market?

Episode Highlights

Watch the Full Video Here

▶ 01:41 Explaining the stock market in the simplest way possible

▶ 09:32 How much money you actually need to start investing

▶ 09:32 How much money you actually need to start investing

▶ 31:08 Options trading explained: what most beginners get wrong

THE INTERVIEW

Welcome to the 10th episode of Creator IRL.

From the Behind the Scenes Podcast with Sapna Sinha

There's a moment in everyone's journey when they realize that the person helping everyone else heal is still fighting their own battles every single day. For my guest Neha S Kumar, that moment became the foundation of her life's work.

But this isn't your typical "I overcame adversity and now I'm perfect" story. This is messier, more honest, and infinitely more valuable than that and how it became her strength to train 90+ women struggling for the same.

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90% of India hasn't invested yet - and I think I know why.

This data is beyond my expectations

  • Only 9.5% of Indian households invest in the securities market.

  • In the US? 62% of adults own stock.

Read that again. 9.5% versus 62%. We're talking about over a billion people in India sitting out of the one thing that has actually, historically, grown wealth over time. And then we wonder why financial stress feels like a national sport here.

Is it because the stock market is actually that complicated? I used to think so. I avoided even opening a brokerage app for years because everything about it felt like it was designed to confuse me. The language, the numbers, and the "expert" opinions all contradicted each other.

Most of us grew up hearing about FDs and savings accounts, and that was it. Nobody sat us down and explained what a share even is.

So this episode of Creator IRL, I brought in someone whose entire thing is making this simple. Akashdeep Grover- CA, CFA, SEBI Registered Research Analyst, 10+ years in markets, and I asked him to explain everything from zero, like he's talking to someone who has never invested a rupee in their life (me🫡).

Here's the whole thing, as simply as I could write it.

What even is the stock market? The answer even our mom will understand

Think about your local sabzi mandi. A new vegetable arrives in the market for the very first time, something nobody has seen before. Before it goes on sale, someone sits down and puts a price on it. That first-time entry with a price tag? That's exactly what an IPO is. A company entering the market for the first time, setting its share price, and letting people buy in.

After that, nobody controls the price anymore. Navratri comes, everyone wants that one vegetable, demand shoots up, price goes up. Three trucks of the same thing arrive, suddenly too much supply, price drops. Pure demand and supply. The market just breathes with who wants what.

The stock market is exactly this. A company enters (IPO). After that, the price goes up when more people want to buy it, down when more people want to sell it. That is genuinely the whole mechanism.

"The market is not a magic trick. Not a Pandora's box. It's demand and supply — exactly like the vegetable market you've been going to your whole life."

— Akashdeep Grover on Creator IRL

Okay, but obviously next question

I already have an FD. Why would I bother with all this complication?

FDs feel safe, you put money in, and money comes out with a little extra. Clean and done. Until you understand the agenda behind it.

Have you ever heard of inflation?

This is eating your money every single year, whether you're investing or not.

In India, prices go up roughly 6–7% every year. Your chai, your rent, your groceries, all slowly getting more expensive. And if your FD is returning 6.5%? You are literally running on a treadmill. You look like you're moving. You're going nowhere.

Think about it this way. Fifteen years ago, ₹1,000 could fill your fridge for a week. In a city like Noida today, that same ₹1,000 gets you maybe two meals out (only if you go for the cheaper one). The money didn't change. The world around it did.

The thing nobody tells you

If you're not growing your money faster than inflation, inflation is quietly shrinking what it's worth — even while your bank balance looks exactly the same. Not investing isn't the safe option. It just feels like one.

The only asset class that has historically beaten inflation over the long run?

Equities. Stocks. That's why 62% of Americans own stock, not because they're reckless or bold. Because it's the only thing that actually wins the inflation game over time. We just never got taught this in school.

The thing that stops most people

Okay fine. But I need a lot of money to start, right?

Nope. I asked this exact thing, and honestly, the answer was kind of embarrassing in how simple it is.

With apps like Zerodha or Groww , you can open a demat account in 20 minutes, for free. If a stock costs ₹20, you buy one share for ₹20. You can start with ₹500. The amount doesn't have to be big. Starting does.

But the real question is: of all the money you have right now, how much should go into stocks vs FDs vs everything else? Akash has a rule for this that is so simple it almost feels like it can't be real.

                        Write this down somewhere

100 − Your Age = % to put in equity

You're 27 → 73% in stocks or mutual funds, 27% in FDs or safer things. You're 50 → go 50/50. The younger you are, the more time the market has to work for you — so you can afford to put more in and ride out the bumps.

But before you invest even ₹1

Three things you need to know so you don't lose money in the dumbest possible way.

Because the market isn't just about picking good stocks, most people lose money not from bad stocks, but from bad habits and worse emotions.

Here are the three things he said everyone needs to figure out first.

1. Decide if you're a trader or an investor before you touch anything.

A trader buys and sells fast, in days or weeks. An investor holds for years.

Think of it like this: if you only go to the sabzi mandi once in a blue moon because your mom dragged you there, you're the trader. If you're the one who goes every week, knows the prices, and builds a relationship with the vendor, you're the investor.

One isn't better than the other. But you have to pick one and actually behave like it. Most people don't decide. So they buy something as a "trade," it drops, and suddenly they say, "It's fine, I'm in it for the long run." That's not a strategy. That's just not wanting to admit a mistake.

2. Have an exit plan before you buy. Not after.

Everyone thinks about when to buy. Almost nobody thinks about when to sell. Before you click buy on anything, ask yourself two things: at what price do I take my profits and leave? At what price do I accept the loss and get out?

If you can't answer both of those before you invest, you're not ready to invest yet. Because when things get emotional, and they will, you need those answers already written down, not made up in the moment. Even my guest became a victim of getting emotional and losing lakhs. I’ll come to that later.

3. Don't fall in love with a stock. The market doesn't care about your feelings.

Akash calls this the Dev Sena Syndrome, like how Dev Sena kept waiting for Bahubali to come back and rescue her. Investors do the same.

They bought Yes Bank at ₹80, it crashed to ₹5, and they're still holding, still saying "it'll come back." Maybe it will, someday. But staying in a sinking stock because you emotionally can't admit you made a mistake is not investing.

The market doesn't reward loyalty. It rewards clear thinking.

The Two Mistakes That Taught Akash More Than Anything

Akash has made some genuinely painful mistakes in the market. He told us about two of them and they both taught different things.

The first one: early in his career, a Telegram group was hyping a stock called Dr. Detson Labs. He bought at ₹6, watched it go to ₹30, felt like a genius — and then one day opened his portfolio to find it at zero. Shell company. Fraud. Never existed in any real sense. It still sits in his account showing ₹0.

The Infosys trade. Or: how a Goa trip turned into a very expensive Monday morning.

Infosys dropped its results over the weekend. US markets had already reacted — the stock moved up 5–7% in ADR trading. Akash's logic: Indian markets haven't priced this in yet. When they open on Monday, it'll move. Completely reasonable.

He was so sure, he put everything into options on Infosys. Everything. One bet. He was already mentally booking flights.

               What actually happened

Markets opened. Stock moved — but only 5%. His options needed a 10% move to pay off. Position went to zero by 11am. Not down a lot. Zero. Every rupee, gone in one morning.

The next day the stock kept moving — exactly like he predicted. But his position was already closed at a total loss.

" No matter how sure you are, you never put everything in one thing. There is no such thing as a sure trade."

Everyone's talking about F&O. Here's what it actually is, and why beginners should probably just not.

Options were designed for big institutions to hedge, basically like buying insurance on a large portfolio. What retail investors use it for is speculation. And here's the dangerous part:

if a stock moves 2%, an option on that stock can move 100–200%. Incredible when it goes your way. Devastating when it doesn't. SEBI data shows that most retail F&O traders lose money. The screenshots you see online show the wins. Not the wipeouts.

💡Akash's actual advice: if you're a beginner, just don't touch F&O yet. Learn equity first, understand what you own and why. Options without that foundation isn't trading. It's gambling with extra steps and fancier words. Come back to it when you have real experience, not just confidence.

Gold, silver, and why your Instagram suddenly became a commodity market.

Akash started buying gold ETFs in early 2024 when nobody was really talking about it, as a hedge against an overheated Nifty. That position has since returned roughly 80%. Now everyone's jumping in, which is exactly when the math starts getting worse for the person jumping in.

• Gold is driven by two things: geopolitical tension and central bank buying. When the world feels unstable, money moves to safety. Gold is that safety. Follow those two signals, and you'll understand gold better than any reel will.
  

• Silver has real industrial demand, chips, solar panels, and electronics. Not just speculation. But it's also volatile enough to drop 80% in one cycle. High risk, real reasons.

💡Don't FOMO in now. The person who bought gold early captured 80%. You'd be capturing what's left, and a correction hits very differently depending on what price you paid.

US stocks - should you bother?

Forget the morning routines of billionaires. Here's what actually helps when you're drowning:

Short answer: India first. In 1980, the US economy was $4 trillion- the same size as India's is today. The US went on to grow to $28 trillion. Foreign investors looking at India right now see exactly that runway. The opportunity is at home before it's anywhere else.

That said, if you want specific US exposure, a tech ETF covering AI infrastructure companies (Nvidia, Microsoft, Google, Amazon) makes sense because you have an actual reason. Just watch the fees on platforms that offer US access. Sometimes the cut they take is bigger than the return.

Last thing, how to know if the finance content you're watching is worth anything.

Three questions. Every reel, every post, every newsletter:

• How much are they saying to invest?

• At what rate of return?

• For how long?

All three answered with real numbers? Worth your time. Just vibes and big round figures? Entertainment. Fine to watch, not fine to act on.

           Leave immediately if you see any of these

Guaranteed returns · Not SEBI registered · Only profit screenshots, never losses · Paid Telegram "tips" groups · More interested in selling a course than talking about actual investing

· Makes everything feel urgent and exclusive. Anyone making finance feel like a secret club is usually making money off your curiosity, not your returns.

That's the whole conversation. Akash has been in markets for over a decade, made real mistakes, written them all down, and his whole message is just: start before you feel ready. Make your mistakes early when they're cheap. By the time you're investing serious money, you'll already know where not to go.

Find him on LinkedIn. He posts stock market memes that actually teach you things without feeling like studying. Book link is in the podcast show notes. Full episode is on Creator IRL wherever you listen.

This newsletter is for educational purposes only. Akashdeep Grover is a SEBI Registered Research Analyst. Nothing here is a buy or sell recommendation. Please consult a qualified financial advisor before making investment decisions.

Want to hear the full conversation?

Listen to the whole conversation on Spotify or YouTube.

If you also have an awesome journey and wants to share with the world

Connect with me on LinkedIn ,

Sapna

P.S. If this episode resonated with you, share it with someone who’s also navigating the ups and downs of the stock market. Sometimes the most powerful reminder is knowing you’re not the only one learning, losing, and growing in this journey.

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