International Youth Day 2021: Take a look at how the Gen Y is investing

Celebrating the spirit of the young around the globe today, the International Youth Day sets off to bring to light the challenges, tribulations and their subsequent ethos of never giving up! And if we are to believe the heartening insights recently released by the popular online mutual fund platform Groww and WazirX, one of the largest cryptocurrency exchanges in the country, Gen-Y has been successfully able to conquer the high altitudes of financial planning and money management! And what’s more, there has been a consistent uptick in the number of women participating in the market as well. We take a look :

Be it cryptocurrency or investing, women rule the roost

“I started investing in mutual funds last year via SIPs (Systematic Investment Plans) with the intention of funding my higher education. I invest around a third of my salary every month, irrespective of whether the market is performing well or not, keeping a specific portion aside for crypto investing since I feel that it is simple to understand and infuses fun and interest into the whole investing experience.”

Delhi-based communications professional Yumna Ahmad is one of the many women who have taken charge of their financial portfolios. Per WazirX, many active female participants on their platform revealed how trading in cryptocurrency helped them achieve financial independence, a secondary source of income, and most of all, gain financial independence. Almost 65 percent of signups by women could be actually traced to tier-2 and tier-3 cities, indicating a growing and thriving sense of financial awareness in the Indian heartlands.

And reassuringly, as Groww mentions, women are not far behind when it comes to other investments like stocks, mutual funds, gold, and even the current market favorite- IPOs! While the highest women participation for investment in stocks came from Mumbai cities such as Lucknow, Ahmedabad, and Jaipur stood the tallest in terms of mutual fund investments by women. Surprisingly, Jaipur, Kolkata, and Hyderabad topped this thriving category for women in two highly unrelated yet significant asset classes- Gold and Equity (IPOs).

Tier-2 and Tier-3? Not anymore!

We often dismiss and relegate tier-2 and tier-3 cities to the shadows of their metropolitan counterparts, but not anymore! WazirX reports a 2648 percent rise in user signups and 55 percent of the total platform signups from these cities, overtaking their urban equivalents, which grew at almost 2375 percent.

While tier-2 cities like Patna, Ahmedabad, and Lucknow saw their investor base grow by an average of 2950 percent, Ranchi, Imphal, and Mohali, ranked as tier-3 cities, trundled up to match the tier-2 pace at 2455 percent.

In fact, when it comes to breeding the new age investors for the first half of 2021, these cities have effectively taken up the mantle. As Groww reports, Ahmedabad (843.22 percent) saw the sharpest spike in terms of young-age investors applying for IPOs. Following closely on heels were Jaipur (288.83 percent) for stocks and Patna (166.91 percent) for gold.

Young? YES! Dumb and Broke? NO!

Astoundingly, there has been a meteoric swell in the magnitude of new investors aged 18-20 in the market. While in 2020, this figure was a whopping 226.12 percent increase, 2021 already seems poised to overtake this figure with a rise of 101.65 percent and growing.

And if you’re wondering if youngsters in their twenties these days are simply wasting their time and whiling away their best years, think again! Turns out, wealth creation trumps priorities of new bikes and fancy clothes for India’s tomorrow! With a 206.08 percent growth registered on the Groww platform in 2020 as far as newbie investors are concerned, the figure continues to rally solidly at 94.53 percent in just the first two quarters of this year. Way to go!