Ankit Agarwal, ACA Gullak Finserv from Vadodara and Shreyansh Jain, Nakoda Investments from Agra have successfully conducted SIP drives with 99 and 153 SIPs in a single day, respectively.
Let us hear their story.
Ankit Agarwal, ACA Gullak Finserv, Vadodara
Nationwide lockdown has not only affected Indian economy and large corporates but also small businesses like mutual fund distribution firms.
However, after reading a couple of articles on Cafemutual about how MFDs have successfully executed SIP drive despite lockdown, I made up my mind to conduct SIP drive to deal with the slowdown in business and keep myself motivated.
Day: I conducted SIP drive on Ganesh Chaturthi since many people consider it auspicious to start an investment journey.
Message: Many investors who were waiting for the right time have missed the bus after the sharp recovery. I explained to them about why they should not try to time the market and instead, invest in a staggered manner to benefit from rupee cost averaging.
Further, I told them that while India’s economy has been facing challenging times, recovery in equity markets indicates that things will improve in future. Markets factor in the future and react accordingly.
I advised my clients to take exposure to fixed income funds through SIPs. Since bank FDs and RDs are no longer offering attractive interest rates, I asked my clients to allocate their fixed income money to debt funds to get better risk-adjusted returns.
Campaign: ‘Now or never’ was the theme of my SIP campaign, which aimed at convincing clients not to time the market.
One-on-one interaction: While holding a webinar is an amazing way to connect with end number of investors simultaneously, in my view, it does not create much impact if you are seeking business from them. One-on-one works best in such situations. Over the period of 20 days, I conducted one-on-one video interactions with over 80 clients to encourage them to start new SIPs.
Do not forget new clients: While existing clients will make most of your SIP drive target, these initiatives are good time to onboard new clients. During my interaction with existing clients, many clients gave me referrals. I reached out to them through video calls to take them through the concept of mutual fund investments and SIP drive.
Overall, I executed 99 SIPs amounting to Rs.5.82 lakh in a single day.
Shreyansh Jain, Nakoda Investments, Agra
Last month, I conducted SIP drive with 153 SIPs amounting to 2.75 lakh in a single day.
Planning: In this SIP drive, I only targeted millennials as most of them are working from home and saving the money incurred on travel and eating out. Further, they are more tech savvy and are interested in exploring something new like investments.
Webinar: I conducted a knowledge webinar for millennials. I invited my existing millennial clients and requested them to spread the word among their colleagues and friends. To attract millennials, I invited a few fund managers and MF officials to educate them about mutual funds and behavioural biases. I organized another webinar to address their queries and concerns related to mutual funds.
Follow up: Soon after these two webinars, I approached all the attendees individually through phone and video calls to encourage them to start SIP in mutual funds to benefit from volatility and rupee cost averaging.
Promotion: I also promoted the SIP drive by posting infographics related to benefits of SIPs and importance of goal based investment through SIPs on Facebook and received a good response from many users.
