Growth of India's Affluent

India will have almost one million 'affluent' individuals with a collective wealth of over US$200bn by 2008, according to the latest from Datamonitor. The number of such people has grown by 17.6% per annum over the last five years, backed by a large skill base and robust domestic stock market.

Datamonitor says there were around 618,000 affluent individuals in India at the end of 2003, from a population of 1.1 billion. Economic growth has averaged 7.6% per annum since 1994, due to the continued development of the service industry and strong growth in the technology sector. The report, Tapping the Indian Wealth Market estimates 'the wealth of India's residents' at US$177bn at the end of 2003, up 123% from US$79bn in 1998.

Of the total individual wealth in India, more than 65% or $116bn is owned by mass affluent (defined as having between $50,000 and $300,000 in investible assets) and high net worth individuals (more than $300,000). Those with more than $3m in liquid wealth owned a total of $17bn at the end of 2003: this numerically tiny group accounted for over 9% of total savings and investments.

Report Author Alan Shields, Datamonitor's Head of Asia-Pacific wealth management analysis, comments: 'India has its own merits as one of the developing BRIC economies (Brazil, Russia, India and China). Competitors are realising this fact and are beginning to bring their propositions to the table. Today, India is attracting both foreign wealth managers and domestic banks to set up wealth management businesses'.

Shields concedes that in global terms, the Indian wealth market is underdeveloped, but notes that 'there are still a large number of affluent individuals who are not being served by the current competitors and the pool of potential clients created each year is huge'.

The company is online at www.datamonitor.com

All articles 2006-23 written and edited by Mel Crowther and/or Nick Thomas, 2024- by Nick Thomas, unless otherwise stated.

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