Larry Fink, Chairman and CEO of BlackRock, speaks during an interview with CNBC on the floor at the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York City, U.S., Jan. 15, 2026.
Brendan McDermid | Reuters
BlackRock CEO Larry Fink and Reliance Industries Chairman Mukesh Ambani want Indians to invest in the country’s equity markets instead of gold.
The advice comes at a time when the yellow metal has been witnessing heightened volatility, while Indian stocks have been underperforming with the Nifty 50 down nearly 2% so far this year.
A large portion of domestic savings in gold and silver “are unproductive,” Ambani said during a fireside chat with Fink on Wednesday, adding that money in the “stock market is compounding.”
Reliance Industries — India’s largest conglomerate — and BlackRock — the world’s largest asset manager — partnered to launch mutual funds in India last year.
Jio BlackRock Asset Management rolled out its first equity fund in August last year and as of December end, it had assets under management of 31.98 billion rupees ($353 million) across its equity funds.
Indians are among the leading buyers of gold in the world, but the country has been seeing increasing financialization of savings, with mutual funds growing in popularity.
Nifty 50 returns so far this year
Global consultancy firm Bain & Company estimates retail investor-driven assets of Indian mutual fund industry to grow to 300 trillion rupees ($3.3 trillion) by 2035 from 45 trillion rupees in fiscal year 2025.
Indians still hold majority of their assets in gold and real estate — allocating nearly 59% in financial year 2025, according to a report by Bain. The share of physical assets was 66% in financial year 2015.
At the event, Fink said that the next 20-25 years will be an “era of India” and Indians need to invest in their country’s growth through capital markets.
India is expected to remain the fastest-growing economy in the world, according to the International Monetary Fund, which has pegged its growth at 6.4% in 2026. In contrast, the IMF projects the world economy to grow by 3.3% in 2026. Major economies like Germany, the U.K and Japan are likely to grow in the low single digits.
Fink also shared that based on BlackRock’s experience in the U.S., the segment of the population that had invested in growth of America is far “better off than those who just kept all their money in a bank account”
“Indian equity market over the next 20 years will double and triple and quadruple,” Fink told India’s The Economic Times in a separate interview, adding that he doesn’t see “gold moving that way.”
Even as foreign investors have been net sellers of Indian equities for over a year, rising domestic participation in Indian equities has haled the markets stay in positive territory.
Investment through systematic investment plans, which refer to investing bite-sized sums at regular intervals, tripled to 2.89 trillion rupees ($31.9 billion) in financial year 2025 from 2021, data from the Association of Mutual Funds in India shows.
In the last one year, MSCI India Index’s dollar return of 2.61%, pale in comparison to 43.67% for the MSCI Emerging Markets Index. However, over the last 5-year period, the India index has delivered nearly twice the returns of the broader emerging market index.