Priya Rao

My portfolio is mostly equities — index funds and a few individual stocks — and I have been wanting to diversify into real assets for a while. The classic options in Bengaluru are property and gold. Property in a city like this means a single transaction that locks up 50 lakh or more, and I am not in a position to take on that much exposure to one asset.

I started looking at fractional real estate platforms early last year. There are a few in the market. What pushed me toward Paylap was that the underlying asset was actual freehold land with named plot numbers, not an SPV-wrapped commercial property where the structure was three layers deep. I spent a weekend going through their disclosure pages and the agreement template.

I invested ₹2 lakh into Plot 22 in Shyam Vihar in March 2024. The plan was 24 months at 13.5 percent. I did not think about it for the next 18 months other than checking the dashboard once or twice a quarter.

When the plot reached maturity earlier this year, the payout was processed in about a week, which is what they said in the agreement. I had two small queries during the process and the response time was under a day each time.

I am not telling everyone I know to do this. It is a longer hold than equity, it is less liquid, and the returns are predictable but not spectacular. But for the slice of my portfolio I want in real assets, this is working.