Rapid rise of India’s affluent class: Over 10 crore Indians to earn over $10K per annum, says a report

financialexpress.com:

Over 100 million Indians are expected to be earning more than $10,000 per annum by the year 2027 on account of an encouraging economic growth rate in the country, suggests a report.

India’s real GDP is expected to grow at more than 6% every year between 2023 and 2028, according to Goldman Sachs Research. “In tandem, the wealth of affluent Indians is rapidly growing as well,” it said.

By 2027, according to a report titled “The rise of ‘Affluent India’” by Goldman Sachs Research, this cohort of affluent consumers will increase from around 60 million in 2023 to 100 million people by 2027.

The report cited the data collated by Arnab Mitra, an analyst who leads research coverage of Indian consumer brands. In the report, Mitra talked about his team’s research, calculations and forecasts, and the characteristics of affluent Indians.

Stating about the data he used to triangulate his definition of “affluent” Indians, Mitra said his team looked at the number of people who take a flight at least once a year; the number of people who order from food delivery services at least once a month; the number of people who file income taxes on sums of more than 1 million rupees ($12,046); the number of people who have credit cards and postpaid mobile connections.

“Whichever way we looked, it seemed that the unique number of people who use discretionary products and services is somewhere in the region of 50 or 60 million. Then we looked at the income pyramid, which tells us what the top 60 million people earn. It seems to be around an annual $10,000 per person,” he added.

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“From 2019 to 2023, the cohort has shown a compounded annual growth