An investor with the foresight or luck to park ₹1 lakh in the index on January 1, 1986 would be sitting on ₹1.57 crore today. Even a modest investment of ₹10,000 would have reached ₹15.7 lakh, underlining the extraordinary compounding power of India’s economic transformation.
“If you ask someone, how is the market today? He will say, it is up 400-500 points. Which index is he referring to? It is Sensex. He is inside it. He understands, accepts and relates to Sensex itself, as a market, as an economy. That is what Sensex has achieved in the last 4 decades.” Markets are asked to comment on Sensex’s 40-year run.
Annual growth of 13.4% over 40 years has almost perfectly tracked India’s nominal GDP growth of 12.97%, cementing the Sensex’s reputation as a true barometer of the world’s fourth-largest economy, now valued at $4.13 trillion.
ETMarkets.com
From License Raj to Global Powerhouse
Born in 1986 in an economy strangled by pre-liberalisation constraints, the Sensex witnessed India’s metamorphosis from a largely agrarian nation to a global growth engine. The index became a reform story, riding the waves of liberalization starting in 1991, surviving the Asian crisis, riding the IT revolution, and showing remarkable maturity through the 2008 global financial meltdown and pandemic shocks.
The meteor’s rise has been punctuated by historical milestones: surpassing 1,000 in 1990, breaching 10,000 in 2006, breaching 50,000 in 2021, and hitting 85,000 in 2024. The Senex alone more than tripled from 25,000 to 85,000 levels in the decade from 2014 to 2014.
