About WealthStem

WealthStem covers the banking and credit side of Indian personal finance — credit cards, loans, deposits, small savings schemes, credit scores and income tax — for readers who want the actual numbers rather than a sales pitch.

Who writes this

Everything on this site is researched and written by Vinoth Kanna. There is no content team, no rotating cast of anonymous bylines and no syndicated filler. If a page has a mistake in it, one person is responsible for it, and that is deliberate.

I have been investing in Indian markets for 16 years, since 2010, and I write from Mumbai. That span covers demonetisation, the arrival of GST, the crash and recovery of 2020, and the shift that made the new tax regime the default — enough cycles to have watched a few confident predictions age badly, my own included.

What I am not is a SEBI-registered investment adviser, a chartered accountant, or a banker. I am someone who has filled in the same forms you are filling in, been rejected for a card, argued with a bureau about an error on a credit report, and read more Most Important Terms and Conditions documents than is reasonable. Where that experience is useful I use it. Where a question needs a professional, I say so rather than guessing.

I started WealthStem because most Indian personal finance content sits at one of two extremes. Either it is a bank's own product page, which will never tell you a competitor is cheaper, or it is an aggregator page optimised to generate a lead, where the "best" card is whichever one pays the most. Both are useful. Neither is disinterested. What was missing was somewhere that shows its working.

How the numbers get here

Every interest rate, fee, tax threshold and eligibility rule on this site is read from a primary source before it is published — the bank's own schedule of charges, an RBI circular or master direction, a Ministry of Finance quarterly notification, or the Income Tax Department. Nothing is reproduced from another blog, and nothing is written from memory.

At the bottom of every page you will find the sources used and the date each one was checked. Rates in India change quarterly and sometimes faster, so a figure without a date on it is not information — it is a guess with a confident tone. If a page's dates look stale to you, treat the numbers as stale and tell me.

How this site makes money

WealthStem earns from two sources: advertising, and commission when a reader applies for a product through one of our links. Both are disclosed. Pages carrying a paid link say so above the fold, before you read a word of the comparison.

The rule that keeps this honest is simple and absolute: a product's commission never affects whether it is recommended or where it ranks. Our comparison tables include products that pay us nothing — several of the cards we most often recommend to first-time applicants have no affiliate programme at all — because a table that quietly omits the best option is worthless to you and, eventually, to us. Read the full advertiser disclosure and editorial policy.

What this site is not

I am not a SEBI-registered investment adviser, and nothing here is personal financial advice. WealthStem publishes general information: how a product works, what it costs, who it tends to suit and where the traps are. It cannot know your income, your tax position, your obligations or your risk appetite, and it does not try to.

For a decision that turns on your specific circumstances — a large loan, a retirement plan, anything with a tax consequence you cannot reverse — talk to a SEBI-registered investment adviser or a qualified chartered accountant. Use this site to walk into that conversation knowing what to ask.

Corrections

If something here is wrong, out of date or unclear, I want to know. Email hello@wealthstem.com with the page and what looks off. Substantive corrections are made to the page itself and noted with an updated date rather than quietly edited away.

Contact

hello@wealthstem.com reaches me directly. I read everything, and I reply to most things — though I cannot give individual financial advice, recommend a specific product for your situation, or help with a dispute against a bank.