Read on to find out Pallav Bagaria’s meteoric rise from a student to an entrepreneur.
Like
many who come to Mumbai with big dreams, Pallav came to the island city to
pursue his CA. He completed his CA Intermediate and a three month Diploma in
Investment Management from S.P. Jain Institute of Research and Management.
However, he found his calling in his hometown Guwahati. Pallav had come to his hometown for a holiday and he happened to meet one of this father’s friends who was a politician. Since Pallav had a good understanding about financial markets, his father’s friend sought Pallav’s advice on his finances. “I had only one client which was my father’s friend. I made good money for him. I realized that people in Guwahati were keen in investing in markets but they were sold insurance, mainly ULIPs. There was a lack of professionalism. I decided to fill this gap,” recalls Pallav.
This gave birth to Brand New Day, his advisory firm in late 2005. He began his journey from Tezpur, a small scenic town in Assam and has today branched out to Guwahati and Kolkata.
Pallav’s road to success was not a cakewalk. Like many aspiring advisors, his initial catchment was his friends and family members. “I got clients easily in Tezpur because a lot of people knew me. But I wanted to scale up,” says Pallav.
One of his major challenges was to spread awareness about mutual funds in the North-eastern states. In 2007, Pallav started organizing investor awareness programs through which he acquired lots of clients. Pallav claims that he reaches out to almost 1500 new people every year through investor awareness programs.
The biggest turning point in Pallav’s business was when his friend Mudit Bansal joined his company in 2007. “He is the backbone and the most integral part of organization. His sheer passion and dedication towards his work has been the force behind the growth and success of Brand New Day. He is a partner in all my businesses,” says Pallav.
Partnering with CAs
HNI was an important segment for Pallav. When he approached HNIs, he discovered that most of them preferred to deal with their CAs. To make deeper inroads in HNI segment he started organizing investor awareness seminars for CAs. In 2009, he started a series of investor education programs in collaboration with the Guwahati branch of Eastern India Regional Council of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India.
In March 2014, Pallav invited eminent journalist Prabhu Chawla to deliver the keynote speech in this event. Pallav had invited 500 CAs to this event and expected at least 150 to show up. To his surprise, more than 250 CAs turned up at the event. Sensing a business opportunity, Pallav offered CAs to join his firm as channel partners. In this agreement, Pallav’s firm provided mutual fund advisory to the CA’s clients on a commission sharing arrangement. Now, some of the top CAs have themselves become Pallav’s clients! “The CAs in our area were not familiar with mutual funds. We took them onboard as channel partners but we have now stopped this arrangement now as we want to focus on building in house business,” says Pallav.
Talking about his biggest achievement in investor awareness, “We did an investor education program in Guwahati last year where we invited Shekhar Gupta, Editor-in-Chief of Indian Express and S Naren, CIO of ICICI Prudential. Interestingly, our guest list included only 70 and we had made arrangements accordingly. But to our surprise, 130 people turned up and we had to stop the program to make changes in the seating arrangements. The best part was that all the people later became our clients.”
Speaking about his business model and services, Pallav explains, “We are distributors and not financial planners.” Pallav started charging a fee to his clients in 2012 but he changed his model after SEBI introduced RIA regulations. Thus, Pallav decided to focus only on distribution model.
Besides MF advisory, his firm also provides equities, derivatives and commodity trading.
Diversification
Pallav Bagaria, 33, is a businessman in true sense. He doesn’t fear treading in uncharted territories. He experiments and changes his business model to adapt to new circumstances.
Mutual funds are not his only forte. Pallav believes in diversification and has interests in other businesses as well. He operates a radio-taxi service called Prime Cabs which runs 150 vehicles. Also, he owns a bakery chain service called Prime Bakes in Guwahati which he started in the year 2011-12. “When I used to land in Guwahati my biggest concern was reaching home as there were no organized taxi operators. I used to travel to Mumbai and Delhi also and found that one could travel anywhere from airport with taxis. Thus, I decided to start radio taxi in Guwahati. After discussing the idea with a few businessmen, I decided to give it a shot. In a span of 30 months, we have grown from 30 cars to 150 cars, with both intra city service in Guwahati, and intercity service all over Assam. Likewise, the Bakery chain idea was conceptualized with a similar structure. We saw a gap in the market, built a competent team focusing on creating value for the people, and gave it an honest effort. We have evolved and refined continuously. Currently, we are the only player to deliver cakes at the customers’ doorsteps,” Pallav said.
Expansion
Pallav has ambitious expansion plans. Pallav has offices at Assam and Kolkata and wants to set up offices in Agartala and Siliguri over the next two quarters. “Initially, we will be handling retail clients and the ones who come through our friends and references,” says Pallav.
Pallav’s advice to aspiring advisors is that they should be patient and willing to take risks. “The business is built in bad times. This business has lot of potential and you need to be patient,” advices Pallav.
Recognizing his passion for advisory, he was awarded UTI CNBC Best Performing Individual Financial Advisor Award in 2014. Currently, Pallav manages close to Rs. 197 crore in mutual funds.