Impact of COVID-19 on the perception of Indian investors towards investment in equity fund

Abstract

During the post demonetization and GST, Indian economy was struggling continuously to recover from the economic crisis. In the financial year 2019–2020, GDP rate fell from 7% to 5.4% which is about 18.20%. BSE Sensex index was 42273 as on January 20th of 2020 but on April 8, 2020, it was 29894. During the Financial year 2019–2020, a reduction of 26% in mid cap index was observed, but at the same time, sensitive index reduced by 22%. These things affect the share market and financial stability of people. The stock market over the last one-year became volatile and crashed. To handle the downwards economy, Government took the initiative and announced deep tax cuts for businesses in the month of August 2019. But in the beginning of the year 2020, there was another sluggish phase which stubborn the economy. This time, it was a virus, named as COVID-19(coronavirus), which created a pandemic situation and spread all over the world. Nation-wide lock down was announced to fight with COVID-19 as there was no vaccine introduced. Starting from agriculture to textile, apparel, automotive, aviation, hotels and restaurants, poultry, chemicals, consumer durables, entertainment, sports, FMCG (fast moving consumer goods), pharmaceutical, ecommerce, IT and moreover corporate sectors were adversely affected due to this pandemic and lock down rules. Therefore, this paper focuses on the impact of corona on the perception of Indian investors towards investment in equity fund.