Women investors are emerging as a major contributor to India’s widening base of demat holders, with Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Assam and Odisha adding accounts at a faster pace, according to a Moneycontrol analysis.
While the overall account addition by men grew by 333 percent in three years, outpacing new demat account growth by women at 315 percent in the same period, however, in 28 of the 36 states, women account additions grew faster than men.
Madhya Pradesh’s women investor addition, at 552 percent, was faster than that of men between 2021-2024, at 507 percent.
Maharashtra retained the top spot as India’s largest base of investors, accounting for over 20 percent of the India's demat accounts, but healthy returns and easy registrations have helped widen the investor base in India since the pandemic, according to an analysis of latest Women and Men in India 2024 report released by the Statistics Ministry.
Of the nearly 11 crore investor additions over the last three years (between 2021 and 2024), 1.8 crore came from Maharashtra, while Uttar Pradesh contributed 1.5 crore, Gujarat and Rajasthan added nearly 80 lakh each, with Madhya Pradesh contributing 70 lakh.
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While Gujarat was India’s second largest state in terms of demat additions leading up to 2021, at a 12 percent share, last year, Uttar Pradesh pipped the state to grab the second spot with a 12.3 percent share.
In terms of women demat account holders in 2024, UP now has a 9.8 percent share compared to Gujarat’s 8.9 percent. In comparison, Gujarat held a 14.7 percent share of women demat account holders across India in 2021, while UP’s share was a low 6.2 percent.
Last year, Karnataka had the third highest share of women demat account holders at 5.8 percent, but Rajasthan was close on its heels with 5.5 percent share, with Madhya Pradesh not too far behind, placed sixth, with 5.3 percent.
In comparison, Madhya Pradesh was ranked 12th in 2021, behind Tamil Nadu, Delhi, West Bengal and Andhra Pradesh.
Bihar has moved from 16th to 12th position in 2024, with women accounting for 3.2 percent of the total demat account holders across India. Assam, which is a third in size of Bihar, had a similar share.
Even though the gender imbalance remains, with women accounting for only one in four demat account holders, some states have been able to close this gap.
In Assam, the ratio was the lowest at one to three. Most north-eastern states were better off when it came to the gender gap compared with most northern and eastern parts of India.
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