India is minting millionaires faster than any other country on Earth.

Today, roughly 86,000 individuals have over Rs 80 crore in investable assets.

Ultra-high-net-worth people? That number is growing by 50% by the end of the decade.

All this new wealth needs managing.

Enter: India’s booming wealth management industry—it’s already worth over a trillion dollars, and that number is set to double in the next five years.

These young advisors are managing portfolios, yes, but they’re also doing a lot more.

They are delivering fruit baskets on random Tuesdays, they’re tagging along to car showrooms with their clients and even handing over their car keys at poker tables.

To hear from wealth managers, check out the latest episode of The Signal Brief.

The Core produces The Signal Brief. Follow us wherever you get your favourite podcasts.

NOTE: A machine transcribed this episode. A human has looked at this text but there might still be errors. Please refer to the audio above, if you need to clarify something. If you want to give us feedback, please write to us at feedback@thecore.in.

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TRANSCRIPT

Kudrat (Host): Picture this.

You grind through college, smash your MBA, and score one of those coveted jobs in India's fastest-growing scene right now: wealth management.

The first couple years are intense. Weekends vanish into client work. Your phone lights up at odd hours because your clients are uber rich: their investable assets start at 10-20 crore rupees and go way up.

These are the families quietly shaping the new India.

They even call you sometimes at 2 am asking if their daughter should pick Stanford or choose an Indian uni. They want your read on that new factory in Gujarat or the beach house in Alibaug. You're basically their on-call advisor, part of the inner circle.

One evening, your favorite client—one of the sharp ones who actually values your input—texts: "Poker night. Come."

You show up dressed right: crisp black shirt, dark jeans, nothing flashy. You sit behind him, watching the table, ready if he needs a quiet word.

He's already a few whiskeys deep, laughing loud.

It's his turn. The pot's building. He pats his pockets, frowns.

Nothing.

He turns, locks eyes with you, flashes that easy grin you've seen a hundred times, and says,

"Hand me your car keys."

The table quiets. Everyone hears it.

What would you do? And what does it cost the person who says yes?

And yeah–this actually happened to a private banker I spoke to for this story.

India is getting richer, fast. Just last year, India saw a 6% jump in both HNIs and UHNIs.

And right alongside that explosion of wealth, an industry is growing: wealth management.

Young advisors stepping into old-money worlds. Helping their clients manage money, yes, but sometimes also crossing lines they never saw coming.

Kudrat (Host): My name is Kudrat Wadhwa and you’re listening to The Signal Brief. We don’t do hot takes. Instead, we bring you deep dives into the how and why of consumer trends.

In today's episode, we're unpacking India's booming wealth management industry. In a country creating millionaires faster than almost anywhere else, who is stepping up to guide this new wealth… and what does that life actually feel like?

Kudrat (Host): Today, India has roughly 86,000 individuals with more than 10 million dollars in investable assets. That’s about Rs 80 crore and above.

Knight-Frank suggests that this number will keep climbing, possibly crossing the mid-90,000s in the next few years.

And then there’s ultra high net worth individuals. Those with investable assets of more than 30 million dollars–roughly Rs 250 crore.

That group is growing even faster.

Some projections suggest India could see a nearly 50% growth in ultra-high-net-worth individuals by the end of the decade: one of the fastest rates in the world.

Kudrat (Host): Today’s wealthy don’t all come from traditional backgrounds either.

Yes, some still belong to the old guard: family businesses, industrialists, even inheritance passed down across generations.

But a growing share is coming from somewhere fresh.

India’s startup boom has minted a whole new class of wealthy founders and early employees.

IPOs have turned paper equity into real cash. Fintech, SaaS, tech manufacturing: they're creating first-generation fortunes at a speed the country hasn’t seen before.

Bottom line: New wealth appears every day.

So who's actually handling this tsunami of cash?

Enter: wealth management.

A generation ago, wealthy families generally relied on their CAs, or even family elders. But now, with bigger fortunes and far more complex investment options, they need professionals to run their financial lives.

According to Deloitte, India’s wealth management industry oversaw about 1.1 trillion dollars in assets in FY24. Over the next five years, that figure will more than double, potentially crossing 2 trillion dollars.

Kudrat (Host): On one side, the big traditional players dominate: global private banks like UBS or Citi, plus Indian heavyweights—HDFC, ICICI, Kotak. They bring brand power, massive networks, and rock-solid compliance teams. They still command a big chunk of the market—over half, by most estimates.

But the real excitement is brewing in the newer crowd.

I’m talking here of boutique wealth management and private banking firms.

You might know names like 360 ONE Wealth, JM Financial, or Centrum.

Back in 2018, India had maybe 45 structured family offices.

Now? Over 300—and the number keeps climbing fast.

These setups hire aggressively, often snapping up young guns—advisors in their 20s and 30s, fresh MBAs or CFA holders.

They jump in and get thrown straight into UHNI relationships, managing clients who are old enough to be their parents, even grandparents.

These advisors stay on call 24/7. They handle those 2 am questions about college picks or factory expansions. They turn into part family friend and part therapist.

Lomush Raj is one of these wealth managers. He works at a mid-sized firm—this is his first job out of college, and he's been at it for about a year and a half.

He told me that going the extra mile is just part of the job.

Lomush:  There have been times that I've, uh, taken fruits for my clients, you know, like a fruit basket.

And, and for no reason, by the way. Like, uh, one thing is you go take gifts for them on Diwali or, you know, any of the holidays. Or Holi is coming up, you take a gift for them on Holi. Just randomly take a fruit bucket for them and just, you know...

I, it's not great, but just sit, lie to them, and tell them that, um, you know, I came across this and I thought, you know, you'd like this, and then get it for them.

Or, you know, go ahead, go to a library bookstore, get an interesting book about maybe investing that simplifies it, hand it over to them. We tell them that it's yours and you'd like for them to give it a read.

Kudrat (Host): Lomush says these small gestures pay off big. They build dependence, and loyalty.

Lomush: There have been requests from my clients where I've, you know, for as an example, they wanted an ICICI, specifically like a card specifically from ICICI. I don't work for ICICI, but they know that I know people there, and I know people that can get that done.

So then I become that spoke for doing such things as well. So anything finance related, um, the query comes to me. And personally I don't mind it. I quite like it because then the client is very dependent on me for their entire financial ecosystem.

And increasingly I can help make their decision. So the small sort of work going out of my way, going out of my job to, you know, help them maybe get a credit card, help them, you know, get access to a certain kind of product, uh, simply because of my own network, is something that I'm more than happy to do.

Because that makes the client stickier to you, and they're never going to leave your ecosystem. Once you catch them in that ecosystem, they're never going to leave it.

Kudrat (Host): Another wealth manager I spoke to—Prafful Singh, at a different mid-sized firm—takes it even further. He blurs the line between professional and personal.

Prafful: In fact, most of my clients, uh, I believe 90% or almost, uh, I would say 100% of my clients are more or less like a family to me, you know.

Uh, I invite them for my family events. They invite me for their family events. Whatever happiness they have or whatever good news they have in the family, they share with me. And vice versa.

Apart from that, very recently, uh, this weekend I was with a client who wanted to buy a car. So I was there. I had no correlation, uh, for, you know, for going there or visiting with him.

But since I know slightly I have an interest in cars, and he knows that I do have that interest, that's why he wanted me to accompany him to select which model or which car is perfect for him.

Kudrat (Host): Before this role, Prafful spent almost ten years as a relationship manager at a big bank, mostly dealing with retail investors—people with net worth in lakhs or early crores. The difference in approach was night and day.

Prafful: When I was working in the bank, it was more or less a product-driven strategy, uh, from the client point of view. Whatever the bank had offered me, you know, maybe out of the five payments I need to choose the best and give it to the client.

Or maybe out of the 20 mutual funds I have to choose and give it to the clients.

It was more of a product-driven approach in a bank. That's what my experience is for the last decade with the banks. They are more or less not focusing on the client relationship. They are more or less focusing on how they can drive the maximum revenue out of a relationship manager or the person who is managing those clients.

Kudrat (Host): Notice the shift.

In retail banking, the customer adapts to the product.

Pick from our five mutual funds. Take what we’re offering.

But at the ultra-rich end of the spectrum, the equation flips. Here, the product adapts to the customer.

And often, so does the banker.

You see, the nature of wealth also determines how their clients interact with wealth managers.

Lomush told me that startup founders and senior execs understand markets well. What they lack is time.

Lomush: So it really depends on what sort of guy you are interacting with.

So there's been a lot of C-suite guys that, you know, have been actively investing since 2014, 15, so they certainly know very well about the markets and have been doing it themselves. But now have reached a stage where they have to work 10 to 14 hours a day, and then seven days a week, like I was saying.

So now they have lesser time on their hands to do the same thing. So the interaction with them is very interesting. You don't have to delve into products so much, or, you know, delve into markets so much, because they understand what it is at the end of the day.

They've made a lot of money. They've invested it also before, so they understand how these investments work.

So the interaction with them is very quick. You then become a spoke for them to save their time and invest smartly, backed by institutional research. So for them it's more their time holds more value.

When you come to like a generational wealth sort of structure, or what I also interestingly see is since that it's a high-ticket sort of client, and traditionally if it's a second or a third generation businessman, I mean, I'll reference an interaction I had about three days back.

The third generation businessman, his father and his grandfather were primarily invested in properties. And that's a large chunk of investments in North India. We certainly believed a lot in properties. Buying real estate, buying a flat, builder homes, etc. And people have traditionally looked at that as a great investment.

So when you enter as a third generation businessman or fourth generation businessman, a lot of the wealth that they have received or has been passed on by other generations has been in hard assets like property or gold because that's what their forefathers believed in.

Now I'm seeing them either liquidating those assets and moving toward the more risky sort of positioning in the equity space or the market, just trying to get that flavour.

So there, their core competencies or understanding from their parents has been that properties is the way to go, or this is the best investment. It certainly has been for their generation. But now young businessmen want to learn more about the market and want to have their foot in the door as well and not miss out on an opportunity like this.

So the conversations become completely different. You need to really delve into your products with them, delve into financial markets. And I'm on the other end, on the receiving end of something that people want to really learn more. So yeah, I think that's how the conversation with them varies.

Kudrat (Host): Lomush spoke about being a “spoke” for his clients, making smart calls, handling details that clients just don’t have the time for.

That kind of trust? It goes both ways.

This brings us back to the poker table we started with. I'm sure you're wondering what happened.

The wealth manager—young guy in his 20s—is sitting there, heart racing, thinking: do I hand them over or not?

He says, what the hell, and hands over the keys. The car cost him about 20 lakh, but he figured the client would make it right if things went south. In this business, relationships matter. Clients trust you with their money. Sometimes you trust them with things of your own.

Ultimately, the client won the hand.

After all these stories, I kept coming back to one question: why do they do it?

Why pour so much of yourself into someone else’s fortune—late nights, 2 am calls, fruit baskets on random Tuesdays, even handing over car keys at a poker table?

So I asked Lomush straight up: does it ever feel like you’re making other people richer while you’re still grinding?

He didn’t hesitate.

Lomush: I certainly do at times feel that I'm making other people richer over myself. But at the same time, that's how the system works, right?

The more money you have, the more money you can make.

You have access to individuals who can teach you, get you in rooms that you may not have gotten in before if you were starting from the ground up by yourself.

And it's something that, you know, if you play your cards right, you can certainly become wealthy.

So I think I'm in it for either of the two things. I don't know where I will be 10, 15 years from now. But if I am doing this job, I think I'll certainly become wealthy from it.

And even if I'm not, I will end up in a position where I have such relationships, such a network, such connections that I can benefit massively from it.

Kudrat (Host): And that’s today’s wealth managers for you.

On paper, these professionals manage portfolios worth crores.

But in practice, the job goes far beyond money.

They help clients navigate investments, yes. But also networks and opportunities, and sometimes even moments of risk.

They sit inside the private worlds of India's fastest-growing wealthy class.

Part advisor. Part fixer. Part confidant.

And as India creates more millionaires every year, the demand for people who can play that role is only growing.

The quiet concierges of the country's new ultra-rich..hustling in the shadows of the fortunes that they are helping build.

Outro: That's all for today. You just heard The Signal Brief. We don't do hot takes. Instead, we bring you deep dives into the how and why of consumer trends. The Core produces The Signal Brief. Follow us wherever you get your favourite podcasts.

To check out the rest of our work, go to www.thecore.in.

If you have feedback, we'd love to hear from you. Write to us at feedback@thecore.in or you can write to me personally at kudrat@thecore.in.

Thank you for listening.