Nifty 50 At 29: Tracing The Journey From Base Value To Market Benchmark

India’s benchmark equity index, nan Nifty 50, marks its 29th day today, April 22, 2025. Introduced by nan National Stock Exchange (NSE) connected this time successful 1996, conscionable 2 years aft nan speech began operations, nan scale was launched pinch a guidelines day of November 3, 1995, and a guidelines worth of 1,000. Derivatives trading connected nan Nifty 50 began connected June 12, 2000, further deepening its domiciled successful India’s financial markets.

What is nan Nifty 50?

The Nifty 50 is simply a diversified scale of 50 blue-chip companies, spanning 15 sectors of nan Indian economy. It represents India’s largest and astir liquid stocks, making it a wide utilized benchmark for communal funds, ETFs, and organization investors some successful India and globally. The scale plays a captious domiciled successful portfolio benchmarking, index-based derivatives trading, and passive finance strategies.

As of March 28, 2025, nan Nifty 50 accounts for astir 55.48% of nan free-float marketplace capitalization of each stocks listed connected nan NSE. Over nan six months ending March 2025, its constituents accounted for astir 30.21% of nan full traded worth connected nan exchange.

Often viewed arsenic a barometer of India’s economical and marketplace sentiment, nan Nifty 50 continues to bespeak nan country's move maturation story, offering investors a snapshot of nan nation’s astir influential companies and economical trends complete astir 3 decades.

Over astir 3 decades, nan Nifty 50 has delivered a compound yearly maturation complaint (CAGR) of 12.93% (as of April 21, 2025), turning into a wealthiness creation instrumentality for semipermanent investors and an anchor for India's increasing passive finance landscape.

What started arsenic a benchmark of 50 blue-chip companies has now evolved into nan bosom of a overmuch larger scale ecosystem. Today, nan Nifty family spans 412 indices, covering everything from large-cap to thematic and ESG-focused indices, driving financial invention and investor engagement crossed plus classes.

Its world entreaty is besides notable — pinch 60 Exchange-Traded Funds (ETFs) and Index Funds search nan Nifty 50 crossed world markets, managing a cumulative Assets Under Management (AUM) of ₹4.4 lakh crore (approx. USD 52 billion).

Growth journey

Since its inception, nan Nifty50 has charted a singular maturation journey, achieving respective awesome milestones. It crossed nan 1,000-point people successful December 1999, past doubled to 2,000 by December 2004. The scale reached 3,000 successful January 2006 and 4,000 by nan extremity of that aforesaid year. By September 2007, it climbed past 5,000. A decade later, successful July 2017, it touched 10,000, marking a cardinal milestone successful its semipermanent trajectory.

In caller years, nan index’s maturation has accelerated significantly. It crossed 15,000 successful February 2021, 20,000 successful September 2023, and 25,000 successful August 2024. On September 24, 2024, nan Nifty50 surpassed nan 26,000 level for nan first time, yet hitting an all-time intraday precocious of 26,277.35 nan adjacent day, and closing astatine a grounds 26,216.05 connected September 26.

These peaks were driven by robust firm earnings, beardown macroeconomic indicators, and accrued information from some unit and organization investors. However, nan scale has besides weathered its stock of downturns, including corrections during nan 2008 world financial crisis, nan COVID-19 pandemic, and much recently, marketplace volatility stemming from U.S. recession fears and reciprocal tariffs nether President Donald Trump.

Despite these setbacks, nan scale has consistently rebounded, showcasing resilience complete time.

Top stocks

Based connected information from ACE Equities, 20 retired of nan 50 constituent stocks successful nan Nifty50 scale person been portion of nan scale since its inception. These long-standing stocks see awesome companies specified arsenic Reliance Industries (RIL), State Bank of India (SBI), Asian Paints, Bajaj Finance, Grasim Industries, HDFC Bank, Hindustan Unilever, Infosys, ITC, JSW Steel, Kotak Mahindra Bank, Larsen & Toubro, Mahindra & Mahindra, Nestlé India, Oil & Natural Gas Corporation, Sun Pharmaceutical Industries, Tata Motors, Tata Steel, Titan Company, and Wipro.

Passive investing

The Nifty 50 besides leads India's passive investing revolution, representing 76% of nan full number of passive costs and 73% of AUM wrong nan segment. Its accordant methodology, liquidity, and assemblage practice person made it nan benchmark of prime for money managers and unit investors alike.

A Nifty Index Fund is simply a type of communal money that mirrors nan capacity of nan Nifty 50 scale by investing successful nan stocks of companies that dress up nan Nifty 50. The nonsubjective of a Nifty 50 Index Fund is to replicate nan returns of nan Nifty 50 index. Some of nan starring Nifty 50 costs see UTI Nifty 50 Index Fund, Bandhan Nifty 50 Index Fund, SBI Nifty Index Fund, HDFC Nifty 50 Index Fund, Motilal Oswal Nifty 50 Index Fund, Nippon India Index Fund, ICICI Prudential Nifty 50 Index Plan, HSBC Nifty 50 Index Fund, DSP Nifty 50 Index Fund, Tata Nifty 50 Index Fund, Aditya Birla Sun Life Nifty 50 Index Fund, LIC MF Nifty 50 Index Fund, Franklin India NSE Nifty 50 Index Fund, and others.