FundsIndia is a D2C wealth management platform. The company recently launched a ‘Sahi Guidance. Sahi Balance.’ campaign
Medianews4u.com caught up with Rhishabh Garg, CEO – Digital (B2C), FundsIndia.
Q. The company reviewed over thousands of investor portfolios recently. What is the single biggest mistake that Indian retail investors are making right now?
We find that investors continue to choose investment products based on past performance and ratings, they choose new products without adequate understanding about how the new product/solution will help diversify their portfolio, and investors take irrational decisions like stopping their SIPs or redeeming investments especially when markets turn volatile.
Q. Many small investors choose direct plans to save money. How do you convince them to pay for your guidance?
In the case of direct plans, investors have to do their own research, choose products by themselves, and manage investments on their own. Whereas, our customers experience guidance at every step – embedded in our digital journeys and in our interactions with customers. We leverage our extensive research and have well established frameworks which help in guiding customers build their asset allocation plan and choosing the right products.
The other important aspect is periodically rebalancing the portfolio and managing the emotions to ensure customers don’t take irrational decisions. There exist two types of customers – those who value guidance and those who believe they can manage on their own. The latter choose direct plans while the former invest in regular plans. We do not charge anything to the customer, while in the case of direct plans, if customers choose guidance/advice, then they have to pay for it as a separate fee to financial advisors.
Q. Could you elaborate on the vision behind FundsIndia’s ‘Sahi Guidance. Sahi Balance.’ campaign and its objective of encouraging responsible and informed investing across India?
The mutual fund industry has done a fantastic job of creating relevance for mutual funds as an ideal investment product. The Mutual Funds Sahi Hai initiative has resulted in millions of investors investing in mutual funds especially via the SIP route. What we at FundsIndia believe in is that while access has been solved to a great extent, it needs to be complemented with quality advice or guidance, so that customers can realise the true benefits of investing in mutual funds.
From the past data, we observe that even though funds have delivered returns, not every investor has experienced similar growth in their portfolios. The primary reason being that customers often make irrational decisions with their investments – choosing the wrong investment products and subsequently not managing the investments in an optimal manner.
Q. What are the various legs of the campaign and the media mix between traditional and digital media?
It is an integrated campaign running primarily across digital and social platforms, built around that social experiment format. We are keeping the mix weighted toward digital because that’s where our audience actually spends time and where we can have a two-way conversation rather than a one-way broadcast. Beyond digital, we have outreach programmes planned in Tamil Nadu & Karnataka.
We plan to scale up the activities thereafter. We are also taking forward this proposition with the IFA community (independent financial advisors), given that they play a key role in guiding customers. We want to acknowledge their efforts and help them with marketing programs to drive acquisition and engagement.
Q. How do you plan to measure the business success of your new marketing campaign beyond just getting more mobile app downloads?
We are watching things like whether SIPs stay consistent through a volatile quarter instead of getting paused, whether people are engaging with our guidance content rather than scrolling past it, and whether the number of goal-based conversations with our advisors goes up.
Those are slower signals than a download count, but they are the ones that actually matter to us.
Q. What marketing channels are you targetting to reach young retail investors in smaller tier two and tier three towns across India?
Digital is naturally where we reach smaller towns, a large share of our newer investors already come from beyond the metros. Our B2B partner network of advisors and distributors plays a big part here too, since they are often the trusted local voice for a first-time investor.
We are leaning on regional language content and that partner network rather than assuming one national campaign in English will do the job everywhere.
Q. Your platform manages 30,000 crores, but discount brokers dominate Indian retail investing today. How do you compete against platforms that offer everything for free?
We manage a little over Rs 30,000 crore, and no, we can’t compete with a free trading app on price or execution, nor are we trying to. The category that offers everything for free tends to leave the investor to make every decision alone, what to buy, how much, when to change course.
That is exactly where most of the mistakes we see in portfolios come from. Our bet is that guided investing produces better outcomes over time, and that enough investors will value that once they have felt the cost of going it alone.
Q. You have been tracking Indian investor behaviour for years. Why do smart people still panic and sell their mutual funds during sudden stock market drops?
Being financially savvy does not make anyone immune to a sudden fall showing up on their phone every ten minutes. The panic is not really about intelligence, it’s about not having decided in advance how they would react to volatility.
When there is no plan written down, the market’s mood becomes the plan. That’s why we keep coming back to goal-based investing, it gives people something to hold onto other than the day’s headline.
Q. When investors get overloaded with daily market news, what practical steps does your platform take to calm their anxiety?
We try to pull people’s attention back to their own goal and time horizon instead of the day’s news cycle. In practice that means our advisors reach out proactively when markets get volatile, rather than waiting for a panicked call. We also deliberately don’t push people toward reacting to every headline, sometimes the most useful advice we give is to do nothing.
Q. What is the goal over the next three years?
We want more investors to see FundsIndia as the place they come for guidance, buying the fund is the easy part, the guidance is what’s harder to get right.
That means growing across our three businesses i.e. retail, our partner network, and private wealth, but doing it in a way where people remember the guidance, not just the platform. We are not chasing a specific AUM number for its own sake, we would rather get the guidance right and let the growth follow.
