Kotak AMC CEO Proposes Tokenizing India's Idle Gold

Kotak AMC's Nilesh Shah said India is sitting on trillions of rupees in idle gold, and wants startups to unlock it through crypto and stablecoin-style products, rather than let the country's import bill keep climbing. Most household gold sits physically in lockers, doing nothing, no interest, no yield, just a store of value. Meanwhile, India keeps importing fresh gold every year, worsening the trade deficit since imports are paid for in dollars. The proposal, broken down: 1. Idle gold means owned but economically unproductive. Unlike gold held via mutual funds or ETFs, household gold generates zero return. 2. Tokenization means representing physical gold digitally. A stablecoin-style product backed by real gold reserves could make someone's gold tradeable digitally, without it leaving the vault. 3. The goal is reducing new import demand. Unlocking existing gold could reduce the need to import fresh gold just to meet new demand. Worth noting, a company like

(MUTHOOTFIN) already runs a large-scale version of "unlocking idle gold," through gold loans, letting households borrow against jewellery instead of selling it. Tokenization, if it takes off, would essentially be a tech-driven extension of the same basic idea, gold sitting idle put to productive use, just through a digital asset instead of a physical loan. The takeaway: India's gold import problem isn't purely about demand, it's partly about supply that already exists but sits unused. Whether tokenization solves this at scale remains to be seen, but the core problem, trillions sitting idle while the country keeps importing more, is worth understanding on its own.