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Rarely does one encounter a “jackpot” worth multiple crores in real life or rather referred to as “Windfall Gains” in the domain of Wealth Management. But such dreams do come true to a very few. Once such amazing story is that of Ms. Garima Sharma, a NRI settled in the UK for almost 30 years.

NRIs (Non-Resident Indians), a category usually considered to be relatively more educated & organized in general public view, also sometimes succumb to such carelessness of forgetting their investments & eventually leaving them behind with the regulators. This was the case with Garima Sharma as well.

In the early 1990s, Garima Sharma, a resident of Kolkata at the time, invested in an Initial Public Offering (IPO) of Mankind Pharma Ltd. Like many retail investors of that era, she applied through physical forms through her bank (leading PSU Bank) and was supposed to receive physical share certificates at the registered address (bank’s address in this case). It was a simple investment made with a long-term view, and at the time, the value was modest.

Shortly after, Garima got married & eventually moved abroad to the United Kingdom to build her career and start a new life. Over the years, as life took turns & with multiple relocations and no centralized digital records available back then, she completely lost track of her Indian investment. The physical documents including any allotment advice, dividends or shares were misplaced, and she had no account or paperwork to refer back to.

For nearly three decades, those shares remained untouched and unclaimed & completely forgotten in the true sense. Only, until GLC Wealth entered the scene in 2020.

How GLC Wealth Found the Forgotten Investment

GLC Wealth, a firm having expertise in the field of Unclaimed Wealth Discovery & Recovery, while conducting its routine data mining & research exercise, stumbled upon data of dormant shareholders of Mankind Pharma Ltd. Among the names flagged was Garima Sharma, showing an entitlement of 10,000+ shares.

Understanding the potential value — which had now grown to approximately ₹1 crores back in 2020 — GLC Wealth made the effort to trace and reach out to her. This was not an easy task as there was very limited digital presence or information available for Garima Sharma. Finally, Social Media platform came to the rescue & luckily Garima Sharma was actively using her Social Media handle to check GLC’s message.  When contacted, Garima was initially surprised and hesitant due to several digital frauds highlighted in the news from time to time. Having no memory of the investment and no documentation to prove ownership it was not easy for her to build trust & move ahead. However after doing her due diligence about GLC Wealth & understanding the basic technicalities & regulations around such situations of unclaimed investments she decided to move ahead & take help from GLC Wealth to recover these investments.

Recovering the Shares Without Any Documents

Despite the lack of records from Garima’s side, GLC Wealth took on the case. Their team began the process of:

• Tracing historical records and details of her old bank account through which the investments were purchased.
  
• Due diligence of all her documents, identity proof, relevant accounts including NRO Bank & Demat Accounts.
• Assisting with multiple rounds of documentations, legal legal paperwork such as affidavits and indemnities & other compliances related to lost shares & NRI status.
  
• Liaising with the company, its registrar and other involved bodies in India.
  

With systematic follow-up and careful documentation, the GLC team successfully helped he.

A Successful Recovery and a Valuable Lesson

Garima was eventually able to see her long-forgotten investment appear in her Demat account, now worth approximately ₹3 crores in 2024 — all without any original documents in hand.

This case is a strong reminder that many investors, especially NRIs, may have similar investments lying unclaimed due to lost records, forgotten certificates, or lack of awareness.