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Kolhapur MFD Sanket Awate has won the prestigious Cafemutual Big League Award at Cafemutual Confluence 2024 held recently in Mumbai.
Sanket has won two awards – SIP Champion Pan India and SIP Champion – West in the individual MFD category. West includes Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Gujarat, Goa and Chhattisgarh.
Powered by CAMS, the award aims to recognize the hard work of MFDs who have achieved business milestones. It identified 24 MF champions across five broad categories – SIP, equity inflows, new folios, fintech player of the year and overall business. The award was purely based on quantitative performance during the FY 2023-24.
Sanket is an engineer turned stock broker and mutual fund distributor. While he started his stock broking company richmee.com in 2017, he ventured into mutual fund distribution in early 2023.
Within 18 months, Sanket has built a monthly SIP book of Rs.2 crore. Currently, he manages AUM of Rs.50 crore in mutual funds for over 10,000 clients.
With two prestigious awards in his kitty, Sanket attributes this success to a three-ingredient recipe:
Ingredient 1: Social media influencing
Sanket has over 50 lakh followers on YouTube and a healthy following base across social media platforms like Instagram and Facebook.
He posts one video daily in Marathi and Hindi. In these videos, he talks about mutual fund schemes, benefits of investing in mutual funds through SIPs and other personal finance tips like overcoming the loan trap, buying a house versus doing SIP and so on.
Sanket looks at YouTube trends and reads all the comments to understand which topic would be relevant for his audience.
Thanks to his consistent efforts, he has acquired the majority of his clients through social media. He said, “Having presence on social media helps me in promoting my brand and credibility among prospective investors.”
In fact, he became a mutual fund distributor after receiving requests from his followers to take up the distribution license.
Ingredient 2: Knowledge sessions
Sanket conducts large physical events across Maharashtra in which he invites 1500-2000 participants. Majority of participants are his social media followers. In these sessions, he talks about the benefits of investing in mutual funds through SIPs and the power of compounding among other things.
Ingredient 3: Goal based approach
Sanket encourages people to look at SIP as a vehicle to achieve key life goals like children education, children wedding and retirement. He believes that people can better connect with SIPs if it is linked to their major life goals.
Bonus
Sanket also reaches out to sections of investors like farmers and local kirana shops whom no one reaches. He meets farmers and business owners in small groups to encourage them to start investing in mutual funds through SIPs.
