After completing his graduation in science, Bhopal based Aditya Jain took charge of his family owned wholesale business (provision goods) in 1985. He learnt the skills of money management, handling clients, product promotion in his family business.
Fascinated with finance and investments from an early stage in his life, Jain had always wanted to build his career in the finance industry; however, he could not pursue his dreams due to family’s financial constraints. However, when things stabilized in the family business, Aditya turned his attention to investments.
In 1992, he took up a sub-broker agency in Bhopal based on recommendations of his friends. Unfortunately, Harshad Mehta scam spooked the investors around the same time and his business was badly affected. A few months later, he came to know about mutual funds through a branch manager of UTI Mutual Fund. He found the product ideal for people and made up his mind to use mutual funds as a tool to achieve success.
Jain took up mutual fund distribution and floated his own financial advisory firm called ‘Kalpatru Multipliers’ in late 1992. During his initial days he could not even manage to pay off his office rent. He used to borrow money from pawnbrokers to pay utility bills and office rent.
From the very first day, he adopted a unique way for selling mutual funds – by installing a mutual fund information stall in front of a bank. Initially, his strategy didn’t work out. Sharing his early challenges with Cafemutual, he recalls “I was very depressed as I failed to acquire even a single client even after putting lots of efforts to educate people about mutual funds but I didn’t give up and followed the same strategy.” Finally, after 25 days of hard work, he got his first client who was an HNI. The client was so impressed with his communication skills that he referred three more clients to him. During his initial days, he worked for 14-15 hours to grow his business.
Along with the information stall, Jain adopted another strategy to target people residing outside Bhopal. He contacted people through telephone directory. He used to send letters asking them to invest in mutual funds to grow their money. This strategy also worked out well for him. Not only he got clients from adjoining districts, he acquired some clients from neighboring states also. He has recently expanded his company’s presence to two other states - Chhattisgarh and Uttar Pradesh besides setting up more offices in his home state – Madhya Pradesh.
Jain has increased his visibility through print media. He regularly contributes articles to various Hindi dailies of Madhya Pradesh.
Now, he has 8000 clients and manages asset under advisory of Rs 55 crore in mutual funds. Besides, he also provides other financial services like stock trading, bonds, NCDs. Jain claims that he has a client base of 35,000 across all financial products. Also, he has 5 offices in Bhopal and has a team size of 100 people. To this day, he markets mutual funds in front of bank branches through his employees.
Jain believes in explaining pros and cons of products to clients. He aims to donate 2% of his earnings in charity and create a workforce of young professionals to spread financial awareness.
In order to spread financial awareness, Jain organizes investor awareness seminars every week in his office. In a recent seminar, seven eminent financial analysts addressed nearly 5000 people.
Recognizing Jain’s talent, UTI and CNBC recently gave him the best performing IFA Tier II North Award 2013 for his efforts to increase mutual fund sales in Bhopal.