Ways to own gold in India
Physical, digital, Sovereign Gold Bonds, ETFs — and where GGF units sit.
India offers several distinct routes to gold exposure, each with a different profile of cost, liquidity, security and tax treatment.
Physical gold — jewellery, coins and bars — is tangible and culturally familiar, but carries making charges on jewellery, storage and insurance considerations, and friction on resale due to purity verification and dealer spreads.
Digital gold allows the purchase of fractional quantities online, with the provider holding allocated physical metal. It is convenient for small, incremental accumulation, but currently sits outside a unified regulatory framework, which weakens investor protections relative to regulated securities.
Sovereign Gold Bonds (SGBs) are government securities denominated in grams of gold. They pay a fixed coupon of roughly 2.5% per annum in addition to price exposure, and capital gains are exempt if held to the eight-year maturity — an efficient structure for patient, long-horizon investors, albeit with limited liquidity.
Gold ETFs offer exchange-traded, demat-held exposure with low expense ratios and intraday liquidity, at the cost of requiring a brokerage and demat account.
Gold Global Fund units provide unit-based exposure without demat accounts, making charges or storage logistics: a transparent price, real-time tracking, and manual verification of every transaction — engineered as the most accessible entry point for the everyday investor.
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Source: Gold Global Fund. Educational content only — not investment advice. Investments are subject to market risk.