‘People having Rs 50 lakh liquid net worth are Lower Middle Class...’: Investor’s social media post sparks outrage 

An investor’s post on social media about net worth and wealth classification has triggered a fierce debate on ‘rich’, ‘middle class’ and ‘poor’ and has generated over 8 lakh views. 

Sourav Dutta, an investor and trader, who now lives in Europe, shared a post on X (formally Twitter) with a comprehensive table of wealth categories based on net worth.  

According to his post, which was submitted on June 20, people with Rs 10 lakh of liquid net worth are “poor”, while individuals with a liquid net worth of Rs 50 lakh are “lower middle class”. 

He classified people with Rs 1 crore of liquid net worth in the “rich” category, while a High Net Worth Individual (HNI) need to have liquid assets worth Rs 10 crore or more.  

''My Definition of Wealth by Liquid Net-worth: Poor : 10 Lacs Lower Middle Class : 50 Lacs Middle Class : 1 Cr Upper Middle Class : 2 Cr Rich : 5 Cr HNI : 10 Cr UHNI : 50 Cr Don't Care Wealth : 200 Cr Generational Wealth : 1000 Cr Agree? I am an HNI. What about you?'' he wrote while classifying himself as High Net Worth Individual. 

Dutta explained that based on the above categorisation, a person’s net should only include assets that can be liquidated to get money in two days. “Liquid Net-worth = all liquid assets (those which you can liquidate and get money in 2 days) - all loans. Primary House isn't liquid Net-worth. Investment real estate and land plots can be considered but discounted by 30-50 percent due to illiquidity. Gold is liquid,” he explained. 

The net worth is the value of a person’s or company’s assets minus their liabilities. 

Several X users disagreed with Dutta’s take. “I always thought I am in upper middle class but today got to know that I'm poor,” wrote one X user. 

“This is called being a condescending prick. You don’t flaunt your wealth like this,” another person said. 

“This is just a basic classification by 1 person, not a scientific data-based research. Personally, I think this is pretty decent classification as of today,” an X user said in response to the post  

“It actually sounds funny that a crorepati is struggling to be middle class. Think of it this way ...how quickly is the value of money going down,” said Alok Jain, founder of Weekendinvesting.