New Delhi, April 24 -- This past year has been humbling for Srikanth Meenakshi, the co-founder of PrimeInvestor and the man behind India's first online-only mutual fund platform launched in 2008. Despite decades of experience, Meenakshi found his investment portfolio trailing the market-and, to his surprise, also trailing a novice investor: his cousin, a high-school teacher.

"He listened to everything I said," Meenakshi recalls, "and a couple of days later, came back and said-and I am not making this up-that he had a hunch gold would do well. I tried to talk him out of it, but he stuck to his guns and put all his money into a couple of gold ETFs. And of course, he's the one laughing now."

The incident forced Meenakshi to revisit one of ...