Chandigarh IFA Shobhit Gupta is a banker turned financial advisor. After working at reputed banks and wealth management firms such as ICICI Bank Wealth Management and Morgan Stanley for more than 10 years, he started his own advisory in 2014.
With more than 10 years of experience, Shobhit thought he had acquired enough resources and knowledge to start his own wealth advisory firm - something that fascinated him since he started pursuing finance as a student.
To begin with, Shobhit compiled a list of 200 wealthy families in and around his hometown Chandigarh from the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) website. Once he had the list of these families, he tried to find out common connections or links that would enable him to reach them. In some cases, it was his friends in prestigious clubs such as Golf Club and in others pursuing them through social media yielded better results.
Tough start
Shobhit tried to reach out to as many potential clients as possible in the first six months. However, the progress was slow. “The first six months of entrepreneurship were very tough,” recalls Shobhit.
One major disadvantage for Shobhit was that he was no more in a position to offer many of the products such as structured products and alternates that he used to access so easily earlier as a banker. However, these were too costly to avail on his own.
“HNI and UHNI clients have a keen interest in these solutions. Hence, not being able to provide them is a competitive disadvantage,” says Shobhit.
Finding solutions
They say there are no problems that do not have solutions. For Shobhit, the solution came in form of Moneygain – an organisation he founded with his partner Sachin Jain. This platform brings in ex-bankers and ex-AMC people who want to start their own advisory. The aim is to share the cost of infrastructure and keep inspiring one another to grow.
Talking about Money Gain, Shobhit said that the idea of merging advisory business came to his mind from one of his clients. “One of my clients had asked me that what would happen to his wealth if anything goes wrong with me. This made me realize that IFAs should institutionalize their practices to plan succession, make existing clients comfortable and attract new clients. Soon, I met a couple of likeminded IFAs and encouraged them to merge our businesses. After a series of meetings, Sachin and I merged our businesses to form Money Gain.”
After Moneygain, advisory became a different ball game for Shobhit. With the right infrastructure, he was able to acquire a few corporate clients using his expertise on debt products.
Moreover, during his first six months, he had realised that most of the HNI clients in his area did not have a diversified portfolio. Therefore, he started stressing the importance of asset allocation in designing a well-diversified portfolio to them in his meetings.
Shobhit knew that referrals are the most effective way to get new clients, especially HNIs and UHNIs. To reach out to more potential clients, he started asking existing clients for referrals. He also used social media such as Facebook and LinkedIn to look for clients. These platforms also came handy for doing his homework before meeting a client.
Shobhit feels that once wealthy clients get to know that he has a good number of HNI clients, it makes his job easy. Therefore, he started taking testimonials from his existing clients. Moreover, he often encourages his potential clients to do a reference check with his existing clients on his credentials.
“People are likely to believe what they hear from another client more than what you tell them. Somehow they connect with them easily,” he says.
Today, Shobhit manages over 200 clients and has an AUM of Rs.350 crore. Overall, Moneygain has presence across five cities in north India and has an AUM of over Rs.1000 crore.
Takeaways
- Look at industries or institutions in and around your hometown to generate a list of potential clients
- Look for similar-minded IFAs to merge business and reduce infrastructure cost
- Use social media platforms such as LinkedIn and Facebook to get referrals and prepare for a meeting with a potential client
