Radhika Gupta, MD & CEO of Edelweiss Mutual Fund, advises investors to stop chasing arbitrary, large retirement targets like Rs 40 crore. At the India Today Woman Summit 2026, she introduced a '10-30-50' framework to encourage consistent saving. This approach prioritizes personalized planning based on individual lifestyle, location, and inflation-adjusted expenses rather than generic benchmarks that can often discourage new investors.
Radhika Gupta, the Managing Director and CEO of Edelweiss Mutual Fund, is urging Indian investors to rethink how they plan for their retirement years. Speaking at the India Today Woman Summit 2026, she highlighted that the industry-wide focus on massive retirement targets, such as a Rs 40 crore corpus, can often do more harm than good. Gupta argued that these large, intimidating figures can cause fear among potential investors, leading them to delay or avoid starting their investment journey entirely.
Instead of chasing a one-size-fits-all number, Gupta suggests that individuals should focus on a personalized calculation. She emphasized that retirement needs are unique to every person and depend on several variables, including current age, city of residence, existing assets like a paid-up home, and future lifestyle expectations. For instance, a retiree living in a city like Mumbai might have different financial requirements compared to someone in Delhi, depending on their housing situation and family support systems. She advised individuals, especially those in their 40s and 50s, to start by estimating their essential monthly expenses in a non-earning scenario and adjusting these for future inflation.
To make retirement planning more accessible and less daunting, Gupta introduced the '10-30-50' framework. This strategy encourages a phased approach to wealth building: investing 10% of post-tax income during one's 20s, increasing this to 30% in the 30s, and moving to 50% in the 40s. The core objective of this framework is to foster the habit of regular, disciplined investing. By starting small and scaling up as income grows, investors can steadily build a corpus that is tailored to their specific reality rather than aiming for an arbitrary, market-driven headline number.
For investors, the key takeaway from this perspective is the shift from 'how much do I need in total' to 'what do I need to sustain my lifestyle.' Financial planning is a long-term process, and success often relies on consistency, discipline, and accounting for the eroding effect of inflation over time. The most important step, according to the advice, is not the absolute size of the retirement fund, but the commitment to starting an investment habit early and maintaining it regardless of the target figure. Monitoring progress annually and adjusting for life changes remains essential for any retirement strategy.