With the retail gold prices in India breaching the Rs 1 lakh per 10 grams threshold on Monday, Uday Kotak, Founder and Director of Kotak Mahindra Bank, lauded Indian homemakers as the “smartest fund managers in the world”. Amid the record-high prices, Uday Kotak posted on X (formerly Twitter), “The performance of gold over time highlights that the Indian housewife is the smartest fund manager in the world. Governments, central banks, economists, who support pump priming, high deficit funding, may need to take a leaf from India, a net importer of store of value forever!”
His remarks come just ahead of Akshaya Tritiya. The post set off a discussion on whether gold’s success should be credited to instinct, tradition, or informed decision-making. One response stated, “Gold may have outperformed, but let’s not romanticize luck as strategy. The Indian housewife’s instinct deserves respect—but so does financial literacy.”
International futures are trading at $3,484.70 per ounce. In India, 24-carat gold is priced at Rs 98,420 per 10 grams, and 22-carat at Rs 90,150, nearing the Rs1 lakh mark. Prices went up by over 26 per cent in 2025. Key global developments including trade tensions, US recession fears, rising central bank purchases (notably by China), and expected rate cuts by the US Fed, are the growth drivers. According to Goldman Sachs, gold is expected to touch $3,700 per ounce by year-end, or even $4,500 in a high-risk scenario.
Per a World Gold Council report, Indian women collectively own an estimated 24,000 to 25,000 tonnes of gold, which accounts for around 11 per cent of the world’s gold in jewellery form. This exceeds the official reserves of the top five gold-holding countries combined, including the US, Germany, Italy, France and Russia, the report stated.