An engineering graduate, Gaurav Perti was Head - Business Banking at Standard Chartered Bank when he left his well-paying job in 2015 to start on his own. Gaurav had done various roles at Standard Chartered Bank including sales & distribution and product management.
Perti sensed an opportunity in the mutual fund distribution considering low penetration of mutual funds in India. Since banks usually cater to big ticket size investors, Perti wanted to start a distribution business for retail investors who can contribute small amounts every month through SIP and other avenues in mutual funds.
To reach out to large number of retail investors, Gaurav wanted to float an online distribution platform. “Technology is the best way to reach out to large number of customer and increase the distribution footprint of mutual funds,” he believes.
Gaurav shared his idea with his friend Pawan Kumar, who had founded many internet start-ups. Pawan was Gaurav’s junior at IIT Bombay.
Pawan liked the idea and decided to join hands with Gaurav in his venture. Pawan helped the company raise capital from venture capital investors and in June 2016, they founded Fincash.com.
Pawan’s technical expertise coupled with Gaurav’s financial know how helped them reach a wide audience online.
To start with, they generated leads by resolving queries on finance through popular social media websites like quora.com and Yahoo Answers. This has helped them pull traffic on their website.
Taking cues from queries, they started developing content for their website and spreading it through social media. The content aims to help people understand basics of personal finance and importance of financial planning covering topics like common financial mistakes, myths, asset allocation strategy and understanding risk profiling.
Gaurav claims that 90% of his clients have come through content marketing. Currently, the company is getting 15-20 new registrations every day, he says.
Once they on board clients, Gaurav recommends them to start their financial journey with liquid funds. “In my view, advisors should make first-time investors comfortable with mutual funds and liquid funds are best to help them understand that they can make money even from idle cash.”
The second step is to encourage them to invest in equity funds through SIP once they gain confidence in mutual funds. Gaurav highlights benefits of investing in mutual funds for long term by using charts. He explains to his clients the power of compounding over the long term.
Thanks to all these activities, they have 1500 registrations.
Going forward, Gaurav aims to on board 30,000 clients within a year. “We are doing various activities such as email marketing and IAPs with corporate houses to increase our investor base,” says Gaurav.