Vishranth Suresh, Co-Founder, AssetPlus, chats with Ravi Samalad about his mutual fund investment platform and what it has to offer advisers.
How was your first brush with mutual funds?
My co-founder Awanish Raj and I have been investing in mutual funds right from college days. Initially, I began with smaller amounts which I earned tutoring which I invested as systematic investment plans (SIPs). This inculcated a discipline of investing which continued once I graduated too.
What drew you towards starting mutual fund distribution by quitting your job?
Over the years of investing, mutual funds had proven to be an easy investment tool to accumulate wealth. What was surprising was the lack of awareness of mutual funds even among the educated working population.
On further research, it was evident that the lack of penetration of mutual funds was majorly due to lack of knowledge, difficulty in executing transactions and misconception of mutual funds as a tool for seasoned investors. We built AssetPlus with the aim of solving these challenges to promote financial literacy among the masses. We wanted to build a robust platform that blended technology with personalized advice to provide a seamless investment experience.
There are a plethora of apps and investment platforms/robo advisers in India. How are you trying to differentiate?
Launched in April 2017, AssetPlus was built with equal emphasis given to both technology and sound investment advice. Over the years, we have evolved into a digital financial advisory. Unlike most platforms that brand themselves as robo advisers, we strongly believe that a significant chunk of the investor population requires guidance and handholding from a human adviser. These days, investors find it extremely easy to begin investing in mutual funds but many tend to stop beyond a certain point as they are unsure of the direction of their investments. By combining human advisory with ease of operations, we believe AssetPlus has created a perfect solution for long term investors who might not have the time or expertise to handle their investments.
What is your target audience and how do you reach them?
We have investors in all age groups ranging from 18-75, but a majority of investors fall in the segment of 25-55. We reach out to these investors via digital marketing and assist them in completing the on-boarding formalities post which they plan their investments with a human adviser via phone/email/chat. All our clients till date have been acquired online and moving forward, we are exploring offline channels such as Investor Awareness Programmes (IAPs) as well.
Besides mutual funds, are you planning to offer other products like insurance, corporate fixed deposits, direct equity?
Our current focus is to attain a significant investor base with mutual funds. Insurance is definitely in the pipeline, given that they play a vital role in risk mitigation when it comes to financial planning.
How many users do you have currently and what is the assets under advisory?
We currently service over 7,000 investors and have more than 2 lakh users. The platform currently handles over Rs 360 crores of assets with more than 13,000 active SIPs. This is in line with our vision of promoting financial literacy among the masses. Our team is well equipped to service a wide range of clients - investors from Tier 4 regions investing Rs 200 per month as well as clients who invest Rs 5 lakh per month.
Tell us about your offerings for advisers.
We have seen that the recent ban on upfront commissions and subsequent TER reductions have negatively impacted a large number of independent financial advisers (IFAs) who now have to scale their businesses to grow their revenue. This might not be feasible in an offline model.
Over the years, we have built a powerful end-to-end online investment platform that is low cost as well as scalable. The operational aspects of an IFA’s business - right from onboarding a client + KYC to portfolio tracking and reporting is digital and completely automated.
Since last year, we have been offering this technology to IFAs in the form of a white labelled/branded mobile app. The offering is aimed to empower IFAs to focus more on client and investment management while all the operational aspects of the business are automated. This enables IFAs to emphasize more on developing the client relationship and simultaneously provides their clients with a seamless investment experience.
What initiatives are in the pipeline?
We currently work with over 300 IFAs and aim to collaborate with 1,000 IFAs by the end of this financial year. Apart from exploring offline marketing channels, we are also actively investing in technology to provide a superior experience for our investors both on web and mobile.
In addition to the above, we plan to offer online term and medical insurance in the coming year.
