If I had the technology to send a message back in time, I would tell my father in 1980 to “Use Rs.10,000 to buy 100 shares of Wipro as an one-time investment and never sell it for the next 30-35 years.” If he had done that his investment would now be worth about Rs.535 crores. Yes, you read that right. Crores, not thousands or lakhs.
This is one of the common examples given when people come into investing in shares in India. Almost every indian blog about investing in stock markets give this example. Lot of people think that it is a lie and don’t believe it, but it is possible and there are numbers to prove it.
The stock quoted here is Wipro which has done various such bonuses and stock splits in its history of 1980-2014. Lets now see the different corporate actions and how the number of stocks would’ve grown
After the year 2010 to 2014, there were no more bonuses or stock splits. But with just that initial investment of 155$ (100 shares) you now would end up with 96,00,000 shares of the company because of all the stock splits and bonus shares. Stock price of Wipro is about $10 per share, as of 7 April, 2014.