Table of Contents
Dhar is a tier-3 city. Costs are comparatively low, life moves at a measured pace, and most households here have one or two working earners — a government employee, a shopkeeper, a salaried professional, or a small trader. People have money to save. They just haven’t always had the right place to put it.
That’s changed in the last five years. Investment apps have arrived in every pocket. Social media is full of people talking about their portfolios. The stock market is no longer something that only happens in Mumbai. It’s on your phone, one tap away.
And yet, the SEBI Investor Survey 2025 — covering 90,000+ Indian households — found that despite 63% of households being aware of financial products, only 9.5% actually invest. In cities like Dhar, the estimate is closer to 3–6%.
The question isn’t whether investing has become accessible. It clearly has. The question is: accessible to whom, in what way, and at what cost?
This blog compares two paths available to you right now—investment apps and a local financial advisor in Dhar—honestly, with data, and without steering you toward a predetermined answer. If you want the full foundation first, read our complete guide.
First, Who Actually Uses Zerodha and Groww?
Before comparing options, you should know for whom investment apps are actually designed and who are their users:
RBI data shows the median Indian investor age has dropped from 38 to 33 in the last six years. The share of investors under 30 jumped from 22.6% in 2019 to 38.9% by July 2025. Trading apps like Zerodha, Groww, and Paytm Money see over 70% of new users in this age group.
The typical app investor is young, likely urban or semi-urban, earns a regular income, and has some comfort with technology. Fully app-based brokers now contribute roughly 80% of retail equity investors in India. That’s the scale of the shift.
But here’s what the same data also shows: over 75% of individual F&O traders in FY24 reported an annual income of less than ₹5 lakh. More than 72% came from B30 cities — exactly the profile of smaller towns like Dhar.
What Are B30 cities?
A classification under the Association of Mutual Funds in India, where B30 represents all the geographical locations that rank beyond T30 cities with respect to their assets under management (AUM). Usually these are smaller cities that have explored a smaller number of investment options.
This is the tension at the heart of the app story. The same platforms that democratized access have also made it very easy for people with limited financial literacy and limited income—the exact demographic of a city like Dhar—to start trading products they don’t fully understand.
What Apps Genuinely Do Well
It would be dishonest to dismiss investment apps. They’ve changed what’s possible for millions of Indians, and that matters.
Before Zerodha, Groww, and their competitors arrived, investing was largely limited to those who knew a broker personally, could navigate complex paperwork, and weren’t intimidated by minimum investment requirements. Demat accounts grew to over 10 crore by 2023, with retail investor participation in the stock market up 138% from 2018. SIP accounts saw 120% growth over the same period. Apps drove most of that.
For someone who already knows what they want—a specific index fund, a tax-saving ELSS, a recurring SIP — apps are efficient, low-cost, and available at 11pm on a Tuesday. No appointments, no waiting.
Dr. Anubha Srivastava’s peer-reviewed research (Socio-Economic Voices, Indiastat) studied 240 investors across income levels and found that investment apps have genuinely increased financial inclusion — removing geographic barriers and making market participation possible for people who were previously excluded. 41% of app users engage with their investments daily. That’s real financial engagement at a scale that wasn’t possible before.
For those financially literate, clear on their goals, and comfortable with market volatility — an app is a perfectly good tool.
What the Data Says About Retail Investors Doing It Alone
The picture becomes more complicated in the later scenario. Here’s how:
SEBI has now published multiple studies on how retail investors actually perform. The findings are consistent and sobering.
In the F&O (Futures and Options) segment, SEBI found that 93% of retail investors ended up in losses between FY22 and FY24. The average loss per trader was around ₹2 lakh over three years. In FY25, that worsened: individual traders’ net losses rose to ₹1,05,603 crore — a 41% increase over FY24.
43% of F&O traders in FY24 were below the age of 30. Nearly 93% of these young traders incurred losses.
Now, F&O is the extreme end — it’s derivatives, not mutual funds. But it illustrates something important: easy access to a trading platform is not the same as having the knowledge and discipline to use it well. The app makes it easy to act. It doesn’t tell you when acting is a mistake.
And this isn’t just an F&O problem. The SEBI 2025 survey found that approximately 40% of investors who started investing eventually become dormant — the primary reasons being poor performance relative to expectations and negative peer experiences. Many of these lapsed investors didn’t fail because they picked a bad fund. They failed because nobody helped them set realistic expectations, stay invested during a difficult quarter, or understand that a 15% portfolio dip is not an emergency.
Why Experts Beat Retail Investors
This is something the financial industry rarely explains clearly: the gap between expert investors and retail investors isn’t about who is smarter. It’s structural.
Institutional investors — mutual fund managers, proprietary trading desks, and hedge funds — employ teams of analysts who spend every working hour researching markets. In F&O, proprietary traders earned gross trading profits of ₹33,000 crore in FY24, while retail investors collectively lost ₹74,812 crore.
The difference?
97% of FPI profits and 96% of proprietary trader profits came from algorithmic trading.
They are not playing the same game as a first-time investor in Dhar opening Zerodha for the first time. The platforms are the same. The game is not.
A financial advisor — specifically one who helps you invest in well-managed mutual funds rather than direct trading — effectively outsources the expertise problem. When you invest in a mutual fund, a professional fund manager with a research team is making the stock selection. You’re not competing against institutional algorithms. You’re letting professionals do that work and simply staying invested.
The advisor’s role is to ensure you’re in the right funds for your goals, that you understand what you own, and that you don’t make the one mistake that undoes everything: panic-selling during a correction.
The People of Dhar — and What Investment Decision Actually Fits
Dhar’s investor base is genuinely diverse. A government employee in the Collectorate area has a stable income and a pension — but their financial planning needs are different from a small business owner in Dhar or a young teacher who just started earning and is figuring out where to put ₹3,000 a month.
These are the questions that matter when choosing between an app and an advisor:
What do you already know?
If you’ve read enough to understand the difference between equity and debt funds, how expense ratios work, and how to assess your own risk tolerance — you have the foundation to use an app responsibly. If you’re still figuring these basics out, an app gives you access without giving you that foundation.
How much time do you actually have?
The SEBI survey found that a significant percentage of app users are daily or weekly active. That level of engagement requires time, attention, and emotional discipline. A government employee managing a household, a trader managing a business, or a professional with a demanding job may not realistically have that bandwidth. A local financial advisor manages the ongoing decisions so you don’t have to.
What’s your real risk tolerance?
The SEBI 2025 survey found that nearly 80% of Indian households — including 79% of Gen-Z — prioritise capital preservation over returns. If protecting what you have is more important to you than chasing high returns, a well-structured mutual fund portfolio guided by an advisor will serve you better than a DIY trading account.
What happens when things go wrong?
Markets correct. It’s not a matter of if; it’s when. When your portfolio is down 20%, do you have the knowledge and composure to sit still? Or do you need someone to explain why this is normal and what it means for your specific plan? The answer to that question almost determines the answer to the app-vs-advisor question.
The Cost Comparison — What You’re Actually Paying For
When you invest through an AMFI-registered distributor in regular mutual fund plans, the distributor receives a small trail commission from the fund house, typically 0.5—1% annually. You don’t pay this separately. For someone investing ₹5,000 a month, that’s roughly ₹25–50 per month embedded in the expense ratio.
Direct plans through apps carry a lower expense ratio — that difference is the saving. It’s real and worth acknowledging.
What regular plan investors receive in exchange: a plan built for their specific goals, fund selection, periodic portfolio reviews, and guidance during market volatility. The research consistently shows that investors with advisors make fewer panic-based errors — and a single avoided panic sell during a market correction will typically outweigh years of expense ratio savings.
Neither is universally better. It depends on what you’re actually capable of and willing to do on your own.
Which One Is Right for You?
An investment app makes sense if:
- You understand financial products well enough to choose funds independently.
- You have a clear plan and need execution, not advice.
- You’re comfortable staying invested during volatility without outside support.
- You have the time to monitor and periodically rebalance your portfolio.
A local financial advisor in Dhar makes more sense if
- You’re starting out and still building your financial literacy.
- You have specific goals — a house, your child’s education, retirement — and need a plan structured around them.
- Your income is irregular or your financial situation is complex
- You want someone accountable to your results, not just to your clicks.
Most people reading this are somewhere in the middle of this spectrum. The honest advice: if you’re genuinely unsure, start with a conversation with a local advisor. Understand your options. Build your literacy. You can always choose to manage more independently as your knowledge grows.
Dhar is a city where financial planning is still finding its footing. Most households here are in the 94% that haven’t started investing yet — not because they can’t afford to, but because nobody has made it clear enough. That gap is what a local financial advisor closes: not by replacing technology, but by making it make sense for your life.
We’re Real Alpha—AMFI-registered (ARN-330815), NISM-certified, and rooted in Dhar. If you want a conversation, not a pitch
Dhar is a tier-3 city. Costs are comparatively low, life moves at a measured pace, and most households here have one or two working earners — a government employee, a shopkeeper, a salaried professional, or a small trader. People have money to save. They just haven’t always had the right place to put it.
That’s changed in the last five years. Investment apps have arrived in every pocket. Social media is full of people talking about their portfolios. The stock market is no longer something that only happens in Mumbai. It’s on your phone, one tap away.
And yet, the SEBI Investor Survey 2025 — covering 90,000+ Indian households — found that despite 63% of households being aware of financial products, only 9.5% actually invest. In cities like Dhar, the estimate is closer to 3–6%.
The question isn’t whether investing has become accessible. It clearly has. The question is: accessible to whom, in what way, and at what cost?
This blog compares two paths available to you right now—investment apps and a local financial advisor in Dhar—honestly, with data, and without steering you toward a predetermined answer. If you want the full foundation first, read our complete guide.
First, Who Actually Uses Zerodha and Groww?
Before comparing options, you should know for whom investment apps are actually designed and who are their users:
RBI data shows the median Indian investor age has dropped from 38 to 33 in the last six years. The share of investors under 30 jumped from 22.6% in 2019 to 38.9% by July 2025. Trading apps like Zerodha, Groww, and Paytm Money see over 70% of new users in this age group.
The typical app investor is young, likely urban or semi-urban, earns a regular income, and has some comfort with technology. Fully app-based brokers now contribute roughly 80% of retail equity investors in India. That’s the scale of the shift.
But here’s what the same data also shows: over 75% of individual F&O traders in FY24 reported an annual income of less than ₹5 lakh. More than 72% came from B30 cities — exactly the profile of smaller towns like Dhar.
What Are B30 cities?
A classification under the Association of Mutual Funds in India, where B30 represents all the geographical locations that rank beyond T30 cities with respect to their assets under management (AUM). Usually these are smaller cities that have explored a smaller number of investment options.
This is the tension at the heart of the app story. The same platforms that democratized access have also made it very easy for people with limited financial literacy and limited income—the exact demographic of a city like Dhar—to start trading products they don’t fully understand.
What Apps Genuinely Do Well
It would be dishonest to dismiss investment apps. They’ve changed what’s possible for millions of Indians, and that matters.
Before Zerodha, Groww, and their competitors arrived, investing was largely limited to those who knew a broker personally, could navigate complex paperwork, and weren’t intimidated by minimum investment requirements. Demat accounts grew to over 10 crore by 2023, with retail investor participation in the stock market up 138% from 2018. SIP accounts saw 120% growth over the same period. Apps drove most of that.
For someone who already knows what they want—a specific index fund, a tax-saving ELSS, a recurring SIP — apps are efficient, low-cost, and available at 11pm on a Tuesday. No appointments, no waiting.
Dr. Anubha Srivastava’s peer-reviewed research (Socio-Economic Voices, Indiastat) studied 240 investors across income levels and found that investment apps have genuinely increased financial inclusion — removing geographic barriers and making market participation possible for people who were previously excluded. 41% of app users engage with their investments daily. That’s real financial engagement at a scale that wasn’t possible before.
For those financially literate, clear on their goals, and comfortable with market volatility — an app is a perfectly good tool.
What the Data Says About Retail Investors Doing It Alone
The picture becomes more complicated in the later scenario. Here’s how:
SEBI has now published multiple studies on how retail investors actually perform. The findings are consistent and sobering.
In the F&O (Futures and Options) segment, SEBI found that 93% of retail investors ended up in losses between FY22 and FY24. The average loss per trader was around ₹2 lakh over three years. In FY25, that worsened: individual traders’ net losses rose to ₹1,05,603 crore — a 41% increase over FY24.
43% of F&O traders in FY24 were below the age of 30. Nearly 93% of these young traders incurred losses.
Now, F&O is the extreme end — it’s derivatives, not mutual funds. But it illustrates something important: easy access to a trading platform is not the same as having the knowledge and discipline to use it well. The app makes it easy to act. It doesn’t tell you when acting is a mistake.
And this isn’t just an F&O problem. The SEBI 2025 survey found that approximately 40% of investors who started investing eventually become dormant — the primary reasons being poor performance relative to expectations and negative peer experiences. Many of these lapsed investors didn’t fail because they picked a bad fund. They failed because nobody helped them set realistic expectations, stay invested during a difficult quarter, or understand that a 15% portfolio dip is not an emergency.
Why Experts Beat Retail Investors
This is something the financial industry rarely explains clearly: the gap between expert investors and retail investors isn’t about who is smarter. It’s structural.
Institutional investors — mutual fund managers, proprietary trading desks, and hedge funds — employ teams of analysts who spend every working hour researching markets. In F&O, proprietary traders earned gross trading profits of ₹33,000 crore in FY24, while retail investors collectively lost ₹74,812 crore.
The difference?
97% of FPI profits and 96% of proprietary trader profits came from algorithmic trading.
They are not playing the same game as a first-time investor in Dhar opening Zerodha for the first time. The platforms are the same. The game is not.
A financial advisor — specifically one who helps you invest in well-managed mutual funds rather than direct trading — effectively outsources the expertise problem. When you invest in a mutual fund, a professional fund manager with a research team is making the stock selection. You’re not competing against institutional algorithms. You’re letting professionals do that work and simply staying invested.
The advisor’s role is to ensure you’re in the right funds for your goals, that you understand what you own, and that you don’t make the one mistake that undoes everything: panic-selling during a correction.
The People of Dhar — and What Investment Decision Actually Fits
Dhar’s investor base is genuinely diverse. A government employee in the Collectorate area has a stable income and a pension — but their financial planning needs are different from a small business owner in Dhar or a young teacher who just started earning and is figuring out where to put ₹3,000 a month.
These are the questions that matter when choosing between an app and an advisor:
What do you already know?
If you’ve read enough to understand the difference between equity and debt funds, how expense ratios work, and how to assess your own risk tolerance — you have the foundation to use an app responsibly. If you’re still figuring these basics out, an app gives you access without giving you that foundation.
How much time do you actually have?
The SEBI survey found that a significant percentage of app users are daily or weekly active. That level of engagement requires time, attention, and emotional discipline. A government employee managing a household, a trader managing a business, or a professional with a demanding job may not realistically have that bandwidth. A local financial advisor manages the ongoing decisions so you don’t have to.
What’s your real risk tolerance?
The SEBI 2025 survey found that nearly 80% of Indian households — including 79% of Gen-Z — prioritise capital preservation over returns. If protecting what you have is more important to you than chasing high returns, a well-structured mutual fund portfolio guided by an advisor will serve you better than a DIY trading account.
What happens when things go wrong?
Markets correct. It’s not a matter of if; it’s when. When your portfolio is down 20%, do you have the knowledge and composure to sit still? Or do you need someone to explain why this is normal and what it means for your specific plan? The answer to that question almost determines the answer to the app-vs-advisor question.
The Cost Comparison — What You’re Actually Paying For
When you invest through an AMFI-registered distributor in regular mutual fund plans, the distributor receives a small trail commission from the fund house, typically 0.5—1% annually. You don’t pay this separately. For someone investing ₹5,000 a month, that’s roughly ₹25–50 per month embedded in the expense ratio.
Direct plans through apps carry a lower expense ratio — that difference is the saving. It’s real and worth acknowledging.
What regular plan investors receive in exchange: a plan built for their specific goals, fund selection, periodic portfolio reviews, and guidance during market volatility. The research consistently shows that investors with advisors make fewer panic-based errors — and a single avoided panic sell during a market correction will typically outweigh years of expense ratio savings.
Neither is universally better. It depends on what you’re actually capable of and willing to do on your own.
Which One Is Right for You?
An investment app makes sense if:
- You understand financial products well enough to choose funds independently.
- You have a clear plan and need execution, not advice.
- You’re comfortable staying invested during volatility without outside support.
- You have the time to monitor and periodically rebalance your portfolio.
A local financial advisor in Dhar makes more sense if
- You’re starting out and still building your financial literacy.
- You have specific goals — a house, your child’s education, retirement — and need a plan structured around them.
- Your income is irregular or your financial situation is complex
- You want someone accountable to your results, not just to your clicks.
Most people reading this are somewhere in the middle of this spectrum. The honest advice: if you’re genuinely unsure, start with a conversation with a local advisor. Understand your options. Build your literacy. You can always choose to manage more independently as your knowledge grows.
Dhar is a city where financial planning is still finding its footing. Most households here are in the 94% that haven’t started investing yet — not because they can’t afford to, but because nobody has made it clear enough. That gap is what a local financial advisor closes: not by replacing technology, but by making it make sense for your life.
We’re Real Alpha—AMFI-registered (ARN-330815), NISM-certified, and rooted in Dhar. If you want a conversation, not a pitch