MS Shabbir, SenSage Financial Services
I was a banker for 30 years. When I was working overseas and thought of coming back to India, I had big plans in mind. Being a veteran in this profession, I wanted to keep myself aligned in the wealth management space and thought of starting a distribution business with Karvy. However, it did not materialise. Later, I thought of floating a distribution business with a big team. Since I had experience in this sector, I was confident that I will be able to start the business by recruiting the right manpower. But during that time, many call centres and BPOs were luring youngsters with attractive salary packages. So nobody was ready to work with me. During that phase, one of my senior colleagues, who also happened to be my ex-boss, advised me to go solo.
Now this was completely different from what I had planned. It was a real testing time and he advised me to drop my plans of floating a national distribution firm. He advised me to start with a small advisory firm. He told me to be happy with a small office, advice few clients and break-even early. This advice helped me a lot as I’m not dependent on anybody. Interestingly, when I started my advisory firm in 2006, he became one of my clients and is still continuing with my services.
His advice left a strong impact on me. I realized that one must work according to their capabilities and must be smart to adapt to situations proactively. I still have a small office with a dedicated client base and I’m happy with what I have achieved so far.
Ramesh Bhat, Aniram
I was motivated by a quote (Charles T Munger - “Don’t sell anything you wouldn’t buy yourself.”) which I read in a book.
This quote is very apt for the advisory profession. As an advisor, you often neglect researching funds before recommending them to clients. This happens especially when we are new in the business. So when I started my career in this profession, I came across many instances of clients complaining about mis-selling and advisors cheating them. Mis-selling can happen in two ways - deliberately or unknowingly due to lack of knowledge. To overcome such issues, whenever I advise or recommend any products to my clients, I do a thorough research and try to invest my personal money in all the schemes I would recommend my clients.
