Ankur Kapur dreamt of running his own advisory business while pursuing B.Com. His inspiration to set up advisory business was his dad. His dad had incurred losses in business due to financial mismanagement. Ankur recalls “My family faced a lot of hardships those days due to financial mismanagement. That was when I started focusing on financial management.”
To further hone his finance skills, Ankur studied M.Com (Finance) at the Delhi School of Economics. He got his first assignment at American Express (now Ameriprise Financial Services) as a Financial Planning
Ankur Kapur
Specialist in 2004. He was responsible for advising overseas clients. After a stint of 3.5 years, he moved to McKinsey & Company’s corporate finance division where he advised corporate clients on wealth management, merger & acquisition and valuation. Concurrently, Ankur completed CFA to upgrade his skills.
After learning the ropes and gaining enough confidence, Ankur decided to take the plunge. He left his well-paying job in 2011. Keen on starting an online financial advisory firm, he wanted to set up a robust system which required technical dexterity. Ankur soon realized that investing in technology would require sizeable investment. Since his savings were not enough to start off his venture immediately, he took up a job at Ernst and Young as Senior Consultant where he worked for little less than two years.
In the meantime, Ankur met Abhik Prasad through a common friend. Abhik was a digital marketing 
entrepreneur. Abhik was an alumnus of IIM Lucknow, with over 10 years of experience with Cognizant, Lowe Lintas and TCS. Ankur shared his dream with Abhik. Impressed with Ankur’s ideas, Abhik decided to join hands with Ankur in his venture.
In early 2013, Ankur and Abhik floated Finqa.com (Financial question answered). Their idea was to generate leads by resolving queries on finance. This website is a question and answer website where questions are posted by people and answered by the community of users (here experts).
Abhik Prasad
However, the major challenge was to get people come to their website and ask queries on personal finance. Hence, they decided to resolve queries through popular websites like quora.com and Yahoo Answer. This has helped them pull traffic on their website (finqa).
Abhik’s technical expertise coupled with Ankur’s financial know how helped them reach out to a wide audience online. Abhik has ensured that their website appears on the first page of google search in Delhi and NCR with the help of search engine optimization (SEO).
Also, they started developing content by taking cues from queries and spread the content through social media. Ankur is now leveraging traditional media to gain visibility by writing columns on personal finance in leading newspapers and magazines.
After a few months, they started a website called fin10.com to create financial awareness among people. This website enables people to understand basics of personal finance and importance of financial planning covering topics like common financial mistakes, myths, asset allocation strategy and understanding risk profiling.
Meanwhile, they have floated two more websites www.StartaSIP.com and www.Ankur-Kapur.com. While the former gives guidance to investors on how to start a sip and how to choose mutual fund schemes, the latter website exclusively caters to HNIs.
All these web sites helped Ankur and Abhik build trust among people and grow their business. Now, in less than a two years’ time, they have over 100 clients and manage assets of over Rs.3 crore in mutual funds. Also, they have received over 1,000 sign up under the fee based financial planning service. Majority of these clients have come through their websites.
Sharing his experience with Cafemutual, Ankur said, “It is easier to convert a client who is already looking for a financial advice on the internet. Our robust system and trust which we build over a period of time helped us to acquire clients. It is purely a pull model.”
Meanwhile, Ankur has completed CFP and become a SEBI registered investment adviser (RIA).
In future, Ankur and Abhik aim to strengthen their system and provide online financial solution at a click by reducing turnaround time. Also, both of them are focusing to create financial literacy among people.
Their story is a good example of how advisors can leverage technology and internet to get clients.
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