Yohan P Chawla
Business Television India (BTVI) successfully conducted its on-ground initiative, Money Mantra, on 29th January, 2019 in Delhi, to educate the audiences on how to build a strong portfolio in the current volatile market scenario.
The Delhi edition of Money Mantra was conducted after some rich and insightful sessions in Mumbai which was held in October 2018, and the Surat and Ahmedabad editions were organized in December 2018. Each of these cities saw close to 250 people attending the event.
I caught up with Muralidhar Swaminathan, Channel Director BTVI and Anuj Katiyar, Head of Marketing, Research and Branded Content, BTVI for a quick chat on Money Mantra.
Elaborating on its concept, Swaminathan said “Money Mantra is for any individual who wants to become an investor or for those people who already have invested in equities as well as for HNI clients.”
“Our principle is to connect with the audience and help them to get intelligence, insights and knowledge which is relevant to their investment decisions and helps them make the right choice. The knowledge we provide to our audience is through the experience we have as BTVI and from the market experts we interact with.”
“Our objective,” said Swaminathan, “is very simple. We interview a lot of people during our shows on television and we know what is their expertise. Most of the panelists we have on board come with vast experience directly in equity markets or as a financial advisor. So we have a great mix of mutual fund and market experts, both.”
“Our BTVI mantra is Save. Invest. Proper… which is our created acronym for SIP. Ground events are organized to establish a connect with the audience.”
On the audience demographics, Swaminathan said, “People who attended Money Mantra are from the age group of 18 years to as high as someone who is in the range of 70-80 years of age. We had a packed house of about 250 people.”
On BTVI going FTA, Swaminathan said, “Information, insight and intelligence is something that we offer, and we offer itFree to Air. This is something easily available why should anyone pay for this? Tune into BTVI and you will get it for free,” he said with a smile.
In the past, BTVi had organized another on-ground initiative, The MF Guide. I asked Katiyar how unique Money Mantra was, and how different from The MF Guide.
He said, “The MF Guide focuses only on education from a mutual fund perspective. Money Mantra, on the other hand is more from a personal wealth perspective. It’s broader in concept. It talks about portfolio management as well as mutual funds at a fundamental level of what one can or should do to generate wealth.”
On how Money Mantra has rolled out, Katiyar said, “We are meeting people in different cities and educating them about what best they can do in this volatile market. In Delhi our conversations were pretty much same but the audience is different with a different mindset too as compared to the audiences of Mumbai, Ahmedabad and Surat. We are talking broadly the same thing to different audiences with certain customization particular to their mindset. In Delhi, our focus has been on how to build a market in a volatile market.” He said BTVI plans to go beyond metros and tier 1 cities with Money Mantra to grow it and make it more inclusive in terms of people reached and topics and geographies covered.
Katiyar said BTVI will promote Money Mantra on-air, across digital, through print, radio and direct outreach.
