SIP for ₹1 Crore: How Much a Month for 10, 15, 20 or 25 Years

"₹1 crore" is the number everyone has in their head. The colleague who will retire "once the funds cross a crore", the YouTube thumbnail promising it from ₹5,000 a month. It sounds big, and for most salaried people it is still a fair long-term goal. The real question is how much you have to put in every month, for how long, and what that crore will actually buy when you get there.

Below are the actual monthly figures for 10, 15, 20, 25 and 30 years, at 10% and 12% a year, with and without a yearly step-up. Then the less fun part: inflation, tax, and what happens if returns come in lower than you hoped. At the end, one full plan for a 28-year-old, worked through year by year.

The short answer: monthly SIP for ₹1 crore

This is the smallest monthly SIP that reaches ₹1 crore on our SIP calculator, with the same amount every month and no increase. The returns are assumptions for an equity mutual fund, not promises.

The pattern is hard to miss. Going from 10 years to 20 cuts the monthly amount by more than three-fourths, from about ₹43,000 to about ₹10,000. Going from 20 to 30 cuts it again to under ₹3,000. Time does far more work here than the amount.

So yes, ₹5,000 a month can become ₹1 crore. But at 12% it takes a little over 25 years, and at 10% even 25 years falls well short. That is the honest version of the YouTube thumbnail.

How the maths works, and why the last years matter most

The calculator treats each instalment as going in at the start of the month and compounding monthly at the yearly rate divided by 12. So 12% a year is taken as 1% a month. Each instalment then keeps growing until the end. The first one gets 20 years of compounding, the last one gets a month.

That is why a SIP looks slow for years and then suddenly speeds up. Here is ₹10,009 a month at 12% over 20 years.

After ten years you are only at ₹23 lakh, and many people lose heart there. Then the last five years alone add about ₹49.5 lakh. Half the crore shows up in the final quarter of the plan.

Two things follow. First, delay is expensive. Start the same ₹10,009 five years late and you end with ₹50.5 lakh, not ₹1 crore. Five years less, half the money. Second, the last few years carry the most risk, because that is when the most money is in the market.

10% or 12%: which return should you plan with?

Over long stretches, diversified equity funds in India have often given something in the 10–12% a year range. That is history, not a promise, and there have been five-year periods with much lower returns.

The gap between the two assumptions is bigger than it looks. Same ₹10,009 a month for 20 years:

• At 12%: ₹1,00,00,472
• At 11%: ₹87,43,593
• At 10%: ₹76,63,860

Two percentage points less return and you are short by more than ₹23 lakh. Even one point less, which is roughly what a higher-cost plan or one bad stretch can do, costs about ₹12.6 lakh. Costs are the part you control: direct plans of the same fund usually charge a lower expense ratio than regular plans, so if you invest through a distributor, know what you pay for the service.

Our view: plan with 10%, hope for 12%. If you size your SIP for 10% and the market gives more, you reach a crore early. If you size it for 12% and get 10%, you find out in year 18 when there is no time left to fix it. Planning with 15% because "my fund did 22% last year" is planning on luck.

With a step-up: start smaller, raise it every year

Most people can't start at ₹13,000 or ₹20,000 a month in their twenties. But salaries go up. A step-up SIP raises the monthly amount by a fixed percentage once a year, and many AMCs and investment apps offer it as a "top-up" option when you register the SIP. Here is the starting SIP needed for ₹1 crore if you raise it by 10% every year.

For a 20-year goal at 12%, the step-up lets you start at about ₹5,000 instead of ₹10,000. The catch: you put in more of your own money overall (₹34.6 lakh against ₹24 lakh flat), because more of it goes in late and has less time to grow. For most people that's a fair trade, since a 10% raise in the SIP is usually smaller than the actual increment.

A gentler 5% step-up also helps. At 12% for 20 years, you can start at ₹7,280 and end at about ₹18,400 a month. We've gone deeper into this in the post on step-up SIPs.

Reality check: what ₹1 crore will be worth

This is the part most "₹1 crore" videos skip. A crore 20 years from now is not a crore today.

Retail inflation was 4.82% in August 2026, according to MoSPI's CPI release, and RBI expects a little over 5% for the year. For long-term planning most people use 5–6%. Your own household inflation, with school fees, rent and hospital bills, is often higher than the official number.

So the 25-year-old who builds ₹1 crore by 55 with a ₹2,833 SIP will have roughly what ₹17–23 lakh buys today. Useful money, but not retirement money.

Turn it around. If you want ₹1 crore of today's buying power in 20 years, at 6% inflation you need about ₹3.21 crore then. At 12% that means about ₹32,099 a month flat, or a start of ₹16,126 with a 10% yearly step-up. That's a very different number from ₹10,009.

A crore is still a fine target. Just decide what the money is for (retirement, a child's college, a house) and size the goal in future rupees. The retirement calculator does this inflation step for you.

Already have some savings? Count them in

Many people plan as if they are starting from zero. Say you have ₹5 lakh you can put into an equity fund today and leave alone for 20 years. At an assumed 12%, the lumpsum calculator shows it becoming about ₹48.2 lakh. You then need only about ₹51.8 lakh from the SIP, which works out to ₹5,182 a month instead of ₹10,009.

In fact, about ₹10.4 lakh invested in one go today would reach ₹1 crore in 20 years at 12% on its own, since money grows about 9.65 times over that period at that rate. Of course, a large lumpsum comes with timing risk. If you're sitting on a bonus and wondering whether to invest it all at once, read lumpsum vs SIP for a bonus.

Tax: how much of the crore you keep

Equity mutual funds are taxed only when you sell. Units held more than 12 months are long-term, taxed at 12.5% on gains above ₹1.25 lakh in a tax year (section 198 of the Income-tax Act, 2025). Units held 12 months or less are short-term, taxed at 20%. Add 4% cess on top. In a SIP each instalment has its own holding period, so if you sell everything at once, the last twelve instalments still count as short-term.

Worked example. ₹10,009 a month for 20 years at 12% grows to ₹1,00,00,472. You put in ₹24,02,160, so the gain is about ₹75.98 lakh. If you sell it all in one go: the last year's instalments have a short-term gain of ₹8,101, taxed at 20.8% (about ₹1,685). The long-term gain of about ₹75.9 lakh, minus the ₹1.25 lakh exemption, is taxed at 13%, which is about ₹9.7 lakh. Total tax roughly ₹9.72 lakh. In hand: about ₹90.3 lakh.

Two ways to keep more. Don't sell everything in one year unless you need it. If the money is for retirement, you'll likely draw it over many years anyway, and each tax year gets its own ₹1.25 lakh exemption. An SWP (a fixed monthly withdrawal) does this naturally. Also, spreading sales over two or three tax years in the final stretch uses the exemption more than once.

Tax rules have changed often in recent years, so check the rules in force when you sell.

What a SIP does well, and where it can let you down

What works in its favour

• Small start. No lump sum needed. ₹2,000–5,000 a month is enough to begin.
• Auto-debit discipline. The money leaves a few days after salary credit, before you can spend it.
• Averaging. When prices fall, the same SIP buys more units. You don't have to time anything.
• Flexible. You can pause, raise, lower or stop without penalty (exit loads aside).
• Tax only on sale, at a lower rate than FD interest for most salaried people in higher slabs. Our SIP vs FD comparison has the numbers.

What can go wrong

• No guaranteed number. Every figure in this post is an estimate. Equity funds sit at "Very High" on the SEBI riskometer, which is checked every month.
• A crash near the end hurts most. In our 20-year example you have about ₹87.6 lakh after year 19. A 30% fall then takes it to about ₹61 lakh, and there's very little time to recover. That is why you shift money to safer options as the goal gets close.
• Inflation eats the target. As the table above shows, a crore in 20–30 years buys far less than it sounds.
• Behaviour. The plan only works if you keep going through bad years. A SIP stopped in a crash usually does more damage than the crash itself, because a falling market is exactly when each instalment buys the most units. If money is genuinely tight, pause, and restart as soon as you can.

What the crore costs at 25, 35 and 45

• In your 20s: you have time on your side. About ₹3,000 a month with a 10% step-up gets to a crore in 25 years even at 10%. But don't stop at a crore. Given inflation, your retirement number will probably be several times higher.
• Early to mid 30s, 20 years to go: roughly ₹13,000 flat (at 10%) or about ₹6,200 with a 10% step-up. If that's too much right now, start with what you can and step up harder after each appraisal.
• 40s, 10–15 years to go: the monthly figure jumps to ₹20,000–48,000. Use whatever lumpsum you already have, combine it with a step-up, and accept that you may need a slightly longer horizon or a smaller goal.
• Goal on a fixed date (child's college at 18): plan to move money out of equity over the last two or three years, so a late crash can't spoil it. That means the SIP has to be a bit larger to make up for it.
• Prefer no market risk? PPF at 7.1% (tax-free) is the safe route, but the limit is ₹1.5 lakh a year. Even the full amount, on the PPF calculator, reaches about ₹40.7 lakh in 15 years and ₹66.6 lakh in 20. It takes about 25 years, with extensions, to cross a crore.

One plan, start to finish: 28 years old, ₹1 crore by 48

Take someone who is 28, takes home about ₹65,000 a month after tax and PF, pays rent, and has nothing invested yet apart from the PF. The goal is ₹1 crore by 48. Before the first instalment, a few months of expenses should already be sitting in a savings account or FD, so that a job loss or a hospital bill doesn't force a sale in a bad year.

A flat ₹10,009 a month is about 15% of that take-home. Doable, but tight, and it only gets there if the market gives 12%. The step-up table offers ₹5,028 rising 10% a year, which is far easier in year one, but it is also sized for 12%. Here is what each starting point does if returns come in at 10% instead.

The first two rows hit a crore only in the good case. At 10% they fall ₹19–23 lakh short, and you find out at 46 or 47. The ₹5,028 plan can still be rescued by running two more years, which takes it to about ₹1.09 crore by 50 even at 10%. That's a repair job, though, not a plan.

So for this person we would pick the third row. Start at ₹6,200, which is about 9.5% of take-home, and raise it by 10% each year in the month the increment is first credited. If the salary also grows around 10% a year, the SIP stays roughly the same slice of pay all the way through, and that is what makes a plan like this last. The last year's instalment is ₹37,919. That sounds big today, but it would come out of a salary about six times larger. Over the 20 years this person puts in ₹42.6 lakh of their own money. If increments slow to 5–7% for a stretch, cut the step-up for those years and keep the base SIP running.

Expect the middle to feel bad. At 38, with ₹11.9 lakh put in, the account shows about ₹18.9 lakh at 10%, less than a fifth of the goal at the halfway mark. By 45 it is about ₹63.5 lakh, and the last three years add the remaining ₹36.6 lakh. Around 45 is also the time to start moving part of it into debt funds or FDs if the money is needed on a fixed date, accepting that this part will then grow a bit slower.

The running of it is simple. One or two diversified equity funds in direct plans are plenty. Eight funds holding the same big companies don't add safety. Look at it once a year, and judge it by its XIRR (we explain how in how to read SIP returns), not by the value on the day the market is in the news.

And the honest bit. ₹1 crore at 48 buys about what ₹31.2 lakh buys today, at 6% inflation. It's a milestone, not the finish line. If the same SIP, with the same 10% step-up, just keeps running to 58, it reaches about ₹3.98 crore even at 10%. That is much closer to a real retirement number. So treat the crore as a checkpoint at 48, and keep the auto-debit running past it.

Written by the Gainly team for general information, not as investment or tax advice. Rates and rules change, so check the latest before you decide; tell us if something here is out of date. Contact