Born
in a small town in Jammu & Kashmir, Rajat Dhar completed his B-Tech from University of Pune and
PGDM in Marketing. In June 2008, he landed his first job at HDFC
Bank, New Delhi, in retail banking sales through a campus
placement.
In December 2009, he joined IndusInd Bank as a Relationship Manager which gave him exposure to the wealth management industry. Nine months later, he got an opportunity at HSBC Bank where he was actively involved in managing wealth of HNIs, UHNIs and wealthy NRIs.
This was the turning point in Rajat’s career.
During his stint with HSBC Bank, Rajat developed a good rapport with bank’s clients. He often helped them in their other financial decisions by going out of his way.
Rajat and his wife Rohini (ex-colleague) observed that there was a fundamental flaw in the business model adopted by most distributors of financial products. “If a client is looking for a solution for child’s education then distributors recommend a child oriented insurance policy. Similarly, for retirement planning, they would sell annuity products. There was little emphasis on need based selling,” recalls Rajat.
Sensing an opportunity, Rajat and Rohini decided to venture on their own to fill this void.
Both of them put down their papers in September 2011 and floated a firm called ‘Cogent Advisory’ in December 2011.
Since they had a good rapport with bank’s clients, they managed to convert 25 HNI clients. He claims that Rs 4 crore from equity and Rs 2 crore from debt move from the bank when they started their practice. But that didn’t provide the kind of start Rajat was aspiring for.
Rajat found it very difficult to grow his client base further. He adopted cold call strategy to acquire new clients. Though the strategy didn’t payoff in terms of prospect conversion, he learned a lot about psyche and needs of wealthy clients. He found that he was not providing providing basic facilities like online transaction, adequate back office support, diversified product basket etc. to wealthy clients.
Rajat also discovered that HNIs need a centralized system in which all their financial matters could be compiled and dealt effectively in an organized manner. He says, “They like to have a complete financial solution from where their entire financial matter put in a systematic way just like a family office.”
Sensing a demand for one-stop service, Rajat decided to provide services modeled on the lines of family office concept to wealthy clients. The couple built a robust back end support system. Also, they diversified their services by offering consultancy in real estate, global investments, art, estate planning, retirement planning, tax advisory etc. They tied up with multiple professionals like CAs, lawyers, real estate consultants to provide one-stop shop solution to their clients. “If your partner falls short in delivery of services, it may affect your service quality. HNIs never compromise with poor service quality especially wealthy NRIs. Hence, it’s better to be on the safer side and have multiple tie-ups for various services,” says Rajat.
Besides, Rajat and Rohini started providing call centre services to their clients to resolve their grievances and concierge services in which they give value added services like vacation planning etc.
Due to these centralized services, they built a good rapport among existing clients in a very short span of time.
Rajat and Rohini learned from their mistakes quickly and gave a professional touch to their business which helped them win over HNIs. Today, Rajat has a team size of 10. He has 128 clients across mutual funds, insurance, domestic and global capital markets, real estate, overseas real estate mutual fund scheme, alternative investments, and commodity & currency markets. He currently manages asset of Rs 20 crore in mutual funds.
Rajat aims to cater to 150 families and expand his company’s reach in other metropolitan cities.