Enter a monthly investment, expected return, and duration to project your systematic investment plan's maturity value — with optional annual step-up and inflation-adjusted real value.
Cumulative invested amount vs. projected value, year by year.
| Year | Invested (cumulative) | Value | Growth |
|---|
On this page's defaults — ₹10,000 a month, 12% assumed annual return, ten years — you contribute ₹12,00,000 and finish with ₹23,00,387.
₹11,00,387 of that final figure was never contributed by you. It is 47.8% of the corpus, which is the entire argument for starting early: by year ten, nearly half the balance is growth on growth. In year one the returns are negligible; by the final year the portfolio is earning more annually than you are paying in.
Each instalment is treated as its own investment compounding from the month it is made, which is why the first instalment does far more work than the last. The one made in month 1 compounds for 120 months; the one made in month 120 compounds for none.
₹23 lakh in ten years is not ₹23 lakh today. At 6% inflation, that corpus has the purchasing power of about ₹12,84,524 in today's money — barely more than the ₹12,00,000 you put in.
That is not an argument against investing; a savings account would have lost badly in real terms over the same period. It is an argument against reading the maturity figure as if it were spendable in today's prices. Any goal you are saving toward — a house deposit, a child's education — will have inflated by the time you get there, so compare the real figure against the inflated cost, never the nominal figure against today's cost.
Raising the instalment by 10% each year, roughly in line with a normal salary increase, changes the outcome more than most people expect. The same ten years finishes at about ₹33,40,917 instead of ₹23,00,387 — over ₹10 lakh more — and the final year's instalment is ₹23,579 a month rather than ₹10,000.
Because the increase tracks your income, it rarely feels like a sacrifice, which is what makes it the highest-leverage setting on this page. If you change one input, change this one.
The 12% default is a common planning assumption for Indian equity over long periods. It is not a rate anyone guarantees, and no fund delivers it evenly — real sequences include years down 20% and years up 40%, and a SIP started immediately before a long drawdown looks nothing like this smooth curve for years.
Two things the projection also leaves out. Expense ratios come off returns every year: a 1.5% regular-plan fee against a 0.5% direct-plan fee compounds into a very large gap over a decade — see what the commission gap actually costs. And capital gains tax applies on redemption, so the maturity figure is pre-tax. Run the projection at 10% and 14% as well as 12%; if your plan only works at the optimistic end, it is not a plan.
SIP uses the future value of an annuity formula: each monthly investment compounds at the monthly rate for the remaining months, and all installments are summed — maturity = P × [(1+r)^n − 1] / r × (1+r), where P is your monthly amount, r the monthly rate, and n the number of months. Returns are estimates, not guarantees.
A step-up SIP increases your monthly contribution by a fixed percentage every 12 months — matching how most people's investable income actually grows. A 10% step-up on a ₹10,000/month SIP means ₹11,000/month in year two, ₹12,100/month in year three, and so on. Because later, larger contributions still get meaningful time to compound, a step-up SIP produces a noticeably larger maturity value than a flat SIP with the same starting amount.
Maturity value is the nominal future amount; real value discounts that by your expected inflation rate to show what it's actually worth in today's purchasing power: real value = maturity ÷ (1 + inflation%)^years. A large maturity number can still lose to inflation if the assumed return barely beats it.
12% is a commonly used illustrative assumption for equity mutual funds in India based on long-term historical averages, but actual returns vary year to year and aren't guaranteed. Consider also running the numbers at a more conservative rate (e.g. 8–10%) as a stress test.
Worked example: investing ₹10,000/month for 10 years at an assumed 12% annual return grows to roughly ₹23.2 lakh, of which ₹12 lakh is your own contribution and about ₹11.2 lakh is projected growth.
Also want SWP or CAGR projections? Use the combined Investment Calculator. India-specific money rules are worked through end to end in our book, Paisa Playbook. Two pieces worth reading alongside this: SIP vs lump sum, and whether to invest at all or prepay your loan first. Indian salaried investors deciding between the two tax regimes should count their rent allowance in the comparison; the HRA calculator gives the exempt figure.