Summary of this article
Rs15,000 SIP at age 25 can reach Rs10 crore; at 40, it needs Rs 1 lakh p.m.
Discipline matters: Equity exposure and steady SIPs beat timing bets.
Delay is costly: Every five-year wait sharply raises the SIP required.
Most investors believe that building a gigantic Rs 10 crore corpus needs smart stock picking, perfect timing or taking big risks. In reality, it is much simpler. It depends mainly on two things: when you start and how aggressively you invest.
When you start matters
Look at the numbers. If you invest through a systematic investment plan (SIP) and earn around 12 per cent a year over the long term, the monthly amount needed to reach Rs 10 crore by age 60 changes sharply with your starting age.
Start at 25, and you need to invest about Rs 15,000 a month. Wait till 30, and the required SIP jumps to roughly Rs 28,000. Start at 35, and it rises to about Rs 53,000. By 40, you need nearly Rs 1 lakh every month. At 45, the figure swells close to Rs 2 lakh. Delay till 50, and the SIP shoots up to more than Rs 4.3 lakh a month. At 55, the number becomes almost unrealistic.
This is the power of compounding. Time does most of the work. You can build a huge corpus while keeping your investments simple. No unreasonably high-risk bets or clever tricks are required. No fancy investment products needed. When you start early, even small amounts grow steadily over decades. When you start late, you are forced to put in very large sums to catch up.
The first lesson, then, is to start early— even if the amount feels small. A Rs 15,000 SIP begun in your mid-20s is far more powerful than a Rs 1 lakh SIP started in your 40s. The early years give your money time to grow on top of previous gains.
Equity Exposure is Necessary
Second, equity exposure is necessary. If your goal is Rs 10 crore, fixed deposits and other low-risk options alone will not be enough. Equity mutual funds, spread across large, mid and some small-cap stocks, are essential during the long accumulation phase. You can reduce risk closer to retirement, but you need growth assets in the early and middle years.
Top-Up Your Investments and Stay Disciplined
Increase your investments as your income grows. Most people cannot invest the same amount for 30 years, and that’s fine. The practical way is to step up SIPs every year. Even a 10 per cent annual increase makes a big difference over time and keeps the burden manageable. Read more on Step-Up SIPs here.
Fourth, stay invested during bad phases. Markets will fall, sometimes sharply. Stopping SIPs or frequently switching funds during such periods hurts long-term returns. The numbers above assume discipline that is regular investing through good and bad times. Going by experts, SIPs are designed precisely to neutralise timing risk. As per Akshat Garg, Head – Research & Product at Choice Wealth, “A SIP started near a peak can still win over a 7–10 year horizon if you keep contributing. Discipline beats perfect timing.”
Finally, be sensible about return expectations. A 12 per cent annual return is an assumption, not a guarantee. Some years will be better, others worse. What you can control is how early you start, how much you save, and how consistently you invest.
To sum up, "short-term volatilities look like negligible dips when long-term returns are looked at", says Aditya Agarwal, Co-founder of Wealthy.in. But, not staying invested long enough, he adds, often results in less than expected returns or even loss of capital. The only way to build a large corpus via monthly SIP investments is patience, say experts. So, building Rs 10 crore is not about big talk or fancy strategies. It is about starting early, investing regularly, and giving your money enough time to grow. The longer you wait, the harder and costlier the goal becomes.
