First generation entrepreneur C S Sudheer started IndianMoney.com at the age of 22. He tells Cafemutual how his company has dispensed free advice to over six lakh investors across India on phone.
Tell us something about your
background and what inspired you to start Indianmoney.com?
I am from Thirthahalli, Shimoga
District, Karnataka. I hail from a middle class family and my father is a farmer.
I have done my graduation in Business Management and was the university topper.
Post my graduation, I started my career with ICICI Prudential by chance, where I was selling insurance products. I joined Howden India, a multinational insurance broker, which was involved in risk management and retail insurance businesses as their regional head.
Right from childhood I was interested in matters related to money and finance. The idea of IndianMoney.com took shape after a chance meeting with an auto driver in early 2008. The auto driver told me that a sales person from my organization had sold him an insurance policy with a promise that he would get Rs 1 lakh after 3 years if he paid Rs 25,000 once. On checking the driver's document, I realized he was tricked into buying a regular premium unit-linked insurance plan in which he had to pay Rs. 25,000 for 3 years and at the end of which the auto driver could get a return based on the market conditions.
That incident changed the way I looked at the insurance industry. Till then I had never thought of insurance business from a common man’s perspective.
For me selling insurance was all about realizing my own dreams but with this experience it struck me that we are killing the dreams of innocent people to realize our dreams. I sensed that there was an opportunity here. That is how the idea of IndianMoney.com took shape i.e. to spread financial literacy and to provide genuine and unbiased financial education to anyone who needs it.
What kind of services does Indianmoney.com provide?
IndianMoney.com addresses the pain points of two large groups:
Consumers: We provide unbiased and accurate information/education on matters related to finance and investment to consumers (the buyer of financial products). We currently do that free of charge and over the phone.
All the consumer needs to do is get in touch with us either by filling his contact details on our website or by leaving a missed call at our helpline number. Someone from our team of Wealth Doctors calls them back and resolves their query or doubt.
Associates: After providing financial education to the consumers who call us, we ask these consumers if they would like to meet our associates from their vicinity, so that they can check out the financial products that might satisfy their requirement. We make it clear that they are not under any obligation to buy any financial product from our associates.
On getting a response from the consumer that they would like to meet our associates, we pass on the consumer contact details to an associate from the consumer’s area.
What is your revenue model?
We do not charge the consumers; we provide financial education free of charge to anyone who gets in contact with us. We generate revenue by charging our associates a “referral fee” for every lead that we transfer to them.
Our associates are agents or sellers of financial products that register with us for getting leads. As we charge only a “referral fee” and not a “success fee” to our associates, we remain neutral whether the associate is able to make a sale out of the lead transferred to him.
How do you shortlist whom you wish to refer investors to? What is the criteria? Do financial intermediaries have to register or empanel with your firm?
We don’t have any such practice currently. Any agent or intermediary who is in to the business of distribution of financial products can buy our leads. However, only the one with the right attitude, skill & ethics can maximize the converts.
We also have an internal agent rating mechanism which collects the feedback about every agent from the consumers who have dealt with them.
How many customers do you cater to? How many new callers do you get every month?
So far we have provided financial education to over 6 lakhs of consumers spread across India. We are presently advising over 4,000 people a day.
Tell us more about your financial planning services.
We are not providing detailed financial planning services to people. However, we provide need based education/advice on various financial products and ensure that they are not misguided or mislead while buying any kind of financial products.
How do you ensure that your employees are giving the right advice to callers?
We have developed an internal learning portal “iLearn” to train & certify our employees regularly. We do have a team of trainers who regularly train our Wealth Doctors on multiple topics.
Leads sent by you to advisors may not convert. How do you tackle this situation?
We make it clear to our associates at the time of signing up with us that we do not promise any conversion ratio or conversion guarantee. One has to understand that we are providing ‘leads’ which are nothing but ‘interests’ expressed by consumers at a certain point in time.
Now like any human trait, interests can change too. It is a part and parcel of the business that the associate is involved in. Seasoned and experienced associates understand this fact and take it in their stride. There can be instances where an associate new to the business might get disappointed at conversions not happening as per his expectation. In such cases we take it up to educate and consult these associates and make effort from our side so that they become more effective in selling.
For this we regularly keep in contact with our associates in the form of newsletters, free downloads/tutorial materials and videos that educate our associates on how to be more effective in their business.
How did you go about spreading the word/marketing your venture in the initial days?
It was through good content that we got good ranking & visibility in the search engines on the internet. Also through our weekly newsletter “Newsletter from Your Wealth Doctor”
Share with us your experience of the initial days of starting your venture. What kind of teething troubles did you face and how did you overcome them?
I started IndianMoney.com when I was 22. I am a first generation entrepreneur with no business background. Hence, everything in business was new to me. Like any other startups, I too had my share of teething issues to overcome like finding the right talent, adhering to all statutory compliances (which were totally new to me) and foremost was to understand the technology as I am from a non-technical background.
How did you convince venture capitalists to invest in your firm? Was it a challenge?
This was something very quick in my case. I didn’t struggle much to convince investors, of course there was a struggle during the due diligence as everything was not in place.
How do you hire the right talent that is able to guide people regarding their investments?
We have developed a very unique process for recruitment & training where we don’t bring in just a candidate, we bring in a fully trained employee in to the system.
What are your future plans?
So far we have provided financial education/advice to over 6 lakh unique consumers across India. Our next aim is to strengthen our fundamentals and build capacity to provide financial education/advice to 30 lakh consumers a year (by FY 15-16).
