Retirement planning for NRIs: Investing in India

At present, I am a non-resident India (NRI) working in Finland and want to start investing in the Indian stock market. While I live alone here, my family resides in India. I plan to work for a maximum 6 to 7 years in Finland and then come back to India. I have a house in Pune that is loan-free, and I will be settling there once I return. I want to know how much money I will need to have if I assume 30 years of monthly expenses of ₹1.25 lakh. Also, how do I go about starting with my investments and where should I invest to begin?

—Name withheld on request.

The decision to invest in India is good, and considering the potential we have in the coming future, it will help you to build a good portfolio and generate returns over the long term. If we consider a 6% annual rate of inflation, the monthly expenses of ₹1.25 lakh will become around ₹1.87 lakh after seven years. Assuming post-retirement inflation at the same rate and post-retirement portfolio returns of 9% per annum, you will need a corpus of ₹4.56 crore for your monthly withdrawal when you are back in India. Please note that you will be technically consuming this corpus that will remain invested during the withdrawal stage as well. You will be withdrawing the monthly requirement from this corpus and letting the remaining money be invested. To reach this amount, you will need to invest ₹3.58 lakh per month for the coming seven years.

Also read: Tax mistakes NRIs are making when selling property in India

Alternatively, you can start with a monthly investment of ₹2.70 lakh and increase this every year by 10% for the coming seven years. All the above calculations are done assuming your investment generates 12% per annum returns during the investment stage.

Investing through equity mutual funds will be much easier and more effective for you as the money will be managed by experienced fund managers. You can consider investing in the following funds: UTI Nifty Index Fund (20%), Parag Parikh Flexi Cap Fund (16%), HDFC Flexi Cap Fund (16%), ICICI Large & Mid Cap Fund (16%), 360 One Focused Equity Fund (16%) and Nippon India Growth Fund (16%). You should try to review the progress every six months to one year.

Harshad Chetanwala is a certified financial planner and co-founder of MyWealthGrowth.com.