Ravi Samalad and Pallabika Ganguly meet Harshendu Kaka, a second generation distributor of financial products, he is a conservative player in the advisory business
Mumbai: The 62 year old Harshendu U Kaka or ‘Kaka’ as he is fondly called by people who know him, is all charged up to share his journey in the financial advisory world. We met him at his two storied building in posh Juhu Scheme. The top floor serves as his office and the ground floor as his residence.
Kaka is an electrical engineer by profession. He got a national scholarship from his school which took care of his schooling expenses. He passed his engineering from Mumbai’s VJTI in 1971. After his engineering, Kaka worked in three companies. He turned an entrepreneur and ran his engineering factory with a business partner. The partnership sailed smoothly but he decided to fly to US once he got his green card. Kaka then landed a job in the US but he had to return to India to take care of his parents.
After returning from US, he decided to take charge of his father’s existing client base. His wife and daughter were also helping his father in the distribution business. His father, a school teacher by profession had started dealing in PPF, NSC, RBI bonds and UTI’s US-64 from 1973.
His late father had built a 100 client base. When Kaka took over the reins, the existing clients were not very keen on investing in mutual funds after the debacle of US 64.
That was the time when insurance and mutual fund sector opened doors for private players. “We had a tough time convincing clients to invest in mutual funds. They used to ask us what will happen to us if these people will run away with our money,” remembers Kaka.
Kaka first got empanelled with Birla Sunlife Mutual Fund. He is now empanelled with almost all the AMCs but he is only dealing with seven fund houses currently. Doing business for all them is a tough task for him due to his age and small set up.
After taking over the reins from his father, Kaka stopped offering pass backs. His late father was wary about his decision as people were so used to getting pass backs. But Kaka stuck to his guns, even if it meant parting with clients.
His father’s client base always remained loyal to Kaka and gave him a lot of referrals. He has only retail clients with a maximum ticket size of Rs 5 lakh.
Today he has more than 300 client base built purely from referrals, with 50 crore assets under advisory. Kaka never made use of new age marketing techniques like flyers, emails, cold calls or presentations. Kaka’s belief is that everything in life is destined.
His most memorable day was when he received his first award from the industry’s well regarded personalities like Nimesh Shah and Nilesh Shah of ICICI Prudential Mutual Fund in 2010 in Mauritius. In 2007, Kaka won HDFC’s Upper Crust Award and in 2009 he won Reliance Mutual Fund’s Silver Partner award.
Kaka is a conservative player in the advisory business. He doesn’t have great plans to expand his client base and wants to cater to his existing client base effectively. Kaka’s story proves that you don’t need to have an MBA degree to make it big in financial advisory business. He is proud to be in this profession.