“A small key can kick start a huge engine. Similarly, SIP can kick start your life’s investment engine,” reads a caption on a photo with a key on his Facebook post.
Another message on his WhatsApp broadcast reads:
Message 1 – Salary credited
Message 2 – SIP debited
Or
Message 1- Salary credited
Message 2 – EMI debited
What do you prefer?
Social media traction
He does not go out to acquire clients. His Facebook page does this job for him. This is evident by the rapid growth in his business. His SIP book has grown from Rs. 7 lakh to Rs. 27 lakh and his assets have grown from Rs. 6 crore to Rs. 18 crore in two years.
Meet Shiva Prasad Konduru from Warangal (Telangana) whose educative posts inspire people to start investing. When asked what drives him to consistently keep adding new investors to his customer base, he says, “My clients say that my Facebook page is addictive. I get messages on Facebook every day from people seeking investment advice. I have no assistant or sales force. I get clients sitting in office,” says Shiva.
Even people who are not investing through him are hooked to his Facebook page. Sharing one such instance, Shiva says, “A Gulf-based pilot follows to my Facebook page very closely. He says that without seeing my page he can’t fly. While he already has a Rs. 50,000 SIP through an online platform, I have never asked him to invest through me.”
Shiva has many examples of clients to share, who he has acquired through social media. “A client who is originally from Warangal and is working in Japan follows my posts. He started a SIP of Rs. 50,000 when he visited to India,” says Shiva.
Recently, one Facebook post on the benefits of investing surplus cash in liquid funds helped him get Rs. 1 crore investments in liquid funds in a week from his city. “I was surprised how one Facebook post can pull people,” says Shiva.
His posts are also benefitting his industry peers who forward them to their clients. He has over 2,100 friends on Facebook of which 1,500 are reposting his updates. He has stopped putting his phone number and email id in his posts after his fellow IFAs requested him to do so. “They said that they share my posts with their clients. So I removed my credentials from my posts,” says Shiva.
Initial Journey
Interestingly, Shiva forayed in mutual funds after he lost his entire savings in stock markets twice. To get a better grip of markets, he started learning from the wisdom of investment gurus and how markets function. Within two years, he made a lot of money in markets by investing in blue chips.
Shiva had a full time job in an IT firm. After quitting his corporate career, Shiva wanted to advise people to invest in markets by floating his advisory firm. Given his personal experience, he knew that direct equity is a risky affair. Thus, he found mutual funds to be a much better alternative to participate in markets. He started dealing in mutual funds in 1993, when the first private sector fund house started in India. So convinced is he with mutual funds that he doesn’t deal in any other products besides Mutual Funds.
Client Engagement
Shiva is not pushy and he believes in educating investors and making sure they are fully conversant with the category before on-boarding them. “I talk to them only if they have two-three hours. I explain each category of funds and their benefits. I don’t believe in being pushy so I don’t ask their phone numbers in the first meeting. I take their number only after they start investing. I leave my number and they call me if they wish to invest,” explains Shiva.
Shiva says that honesty and transparency are the two traits which have helped him earn his client trust. He shares his personal experience of investing in markets with clients to show how MFs score over direct equities. “I lost all my money by directly investing in markets. I share this experience with them and inform them how MFs are managed by professional fund managers,” says Shiva.
Before recommending MFs, he makes sure that he informs prospects about the risks. “Last year, I met an HNI client in Hyderabad. He had a few crores in his savings account. He wanted to invest it in liquid funds for one month and asked me if they are safe. I told him that liquid funds have given negative returns for 2-3 days in the last 12 years. I lost that client. But I won his heart through my honesty. He is doing an SIP of Rs. 50,000 through me now. He has also started investing in liquid funds,” says Shiva.
Impressed by his services, some of his clients ask him why he doesn’t charge a fee. “They tell me that they pay fee to CAs and doctors so why I’m not charging fee. I tell them that I will charge when the need arises,” says Shiva.
Fund selection
After shortlisting the best schemes for clients he invests his own money to see if the fund is performing according to his expectation. He recommends them if he is satisfied with the funds. When asked about his fund selection approach, he says that past returns are not important to him. Shiva does a thorough study of the market and the economy to see which sectors are likely to do well and selects funds which have exposure to these sectors. After shortlisting these funds, he looks at other parameters like fund manager’s experience, process and brand.
App for distributors
One of his clients once asked Shiva how his investments would grow in 10 years. Shiva didn’t have an immediate answer and had to remove his mobile calculator to do this calculation. Back then there were no mobile apps which could help IFAs calculate returns. This is how Shiva got the idea of developing an app. He developed a ‘Wealth Manager App’ which calculates future value, money required to achieve goals, calculate inflation adjusted returns for IFAs. “It is the first app in the MF industry. This app also works offline so you don’t need internet connection after you download it,” says Shiva. Recognising his work for the industry, in 2014, he was bestowed with MFRT Samman (respect) award for developing this app. Today his app is being used by more than 8,000 people.
Preference for personal meets
While Shiva is social media savvy and uses technology for his back office support, he executes transactions offline. While technology helps cut costs, he believes that he gets higher wallet share from clients when he meets them personally. Citing one such instance, “I met a client who wanted to do a SIP of 10,000. We started a conversation on how India will benefit from the various reforms and how markets will reflect this. He was impressed and did a SIP of Rs. 50,000. This would not have been possible if I had not met him,” says Shiva.
Going ahead
Since he doesn’t do any sales push, his client base is restricted to 1200 with 750 live SIPs. “I have many prospects seeking my advice through social media but I meet only one new prospect a week. If I had done aggressive marketing I would have Rs. 100 crore AUA now,” says Shiva confidently.
His aim is to build Rs. 100 crore by 2020.
Shiva’s story is a shining example of how advisers can leverage social media to reach out a vast number of prospects. If you have also acquired clients through social media, do share your experience here.
