ROI Calculator

Return on investment is the universal scorecard: what did I put in, what did I get back, and what does that work out to per year? This calculator gives you all three — total ROI as a percentage of the initial amount, the absolute gain or loss in rupees, and the annualized return (CAGR), which is the figure that makes different investments comparable.

Total ROI alone can mislead because it ignores time. An 80% total return sounds excellent — but over 10 years it's a modest 6.1% a year, less than many fixed deposits, while over 3 years it's an outstanding 21.6% annually. CAGR = (final ÷ initial)^(1/years) − 1 smooths the entire journey into a single steady annual rate, which you can then hold against benchmarks: recent FD rates around 7%, long-run index returns of 11–12%, or inflation at 5–6%. Any investment whose CAGR trails inflation lost purchasing power, whatever the rupee gain says.

Use it for more than stocks: property (include purchase costs and improvements in the initial amount), gold, a business you invested in, a course that raised your salary, or marketing spend against the revenue it produced. For honest numbers, add incidental costs — brokerage, stamp duty, taxes on exit — to the initial investment or subtract them from the final value. The calculator handles losses too: a final value below the initial simply shows a negative ROI.