Inside the financial playbooks of India’s wealthiest women

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May 29, 2025

In this engaging discussion, Soumya Rajan, founder and CEO of Waterfield Advisors, shares her insights on empowering women in finance. She highlights the unique investing traits of women, emphasizing their strategic, sustainability-focused approach. Soumya introduces her T.O.U.C.H framework, which reveals patterns in women's financial behavior that differ from men’s. She also sheds light on the barriers wealthy women face, and how HERitage aims to bridge gaps in financial literacy and access, ultimately inspiring a new generation of women investors.

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INSIGHT

Women's Unique Investment Style

Women invest differently with a method called T.O.U.C.H reflecting their unique style.
They trade less, have goal-oriented, sustainable, conscious, and diversified approaches.

ADVICE

Set Goals and Stay Invested

Define clear financial goals tailored to your risk appetite and life changes.
Stay invested to allow compounding and avoid frequent portfolio churning.

INSIGHT

Generational Wealth Mindsets

Different generations of women have contrasting wealth mindsets shaped by their economic experiences.
Older women focus on saving and preserving wealth; younger women focus on growing and investing it.

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In this special episode, hosts Snigdha Sharma and Rahel Philipose are joined by Soumya Rajan, founder and CEO of Waterfield Advisors, India’s largest multi-family office and wealth advisory firm. The conversation begins with a simple but important question: what does financial empowerment actually mean for women with wealth?

Over her decades in the world of wealth management, Soumya began noticing a consistent blind spot—traditional financial systems weren’t designed with women’s realities in mind. Even wealth advisory firms, she found, were falling short. That led her to launch HERitage, a specialized arm within Waterfield, focused on serving the financial needs of women more intentionally and effectively.

Soumya explains a framework she developed called T.O.U.C.H to outline how women tend to invest differently from men: they trade less, invest with clear goals, prioritize sustainability, and are more conscious and diversified in their approach. These patterns aren’t just preferences, they reflect a fundamentally different way of thinking about money.

The episode also draws on insights from Waterfield’s Women of Wealth survey, which looked at the investment behaviors of over 100 high-net-worth Indian women. The findings challenge a lot of conventional thinking: women are deliberate and strategic investors, but they still face barriers when it comes to financial literacy, access, and decision-making power.

Soumya also talks about how women in India are creating wealth—whether through inheritance, entrepreneurship, or leadership roles in corporate India—and how they’re using that wealth not just for security, but for impact. The conversation touches on growing trends in philanthropy, interest in global markets, and the rise of “passion investments” in areas like art, wellness, and legacy building.

Tune in

Soumya recommends —
TV Show: Lioness
Book: The Outsiders

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