Mr. Anurag Garg – Hi Atul, heartiest congratulations on achieving your 10 crore AUM milestone. It’s a really huge moment in the life of any wealth manager/financial advisor. So, we’d just like to understand what helped you come here. So, first of all, you were a successful banker, you’ve worked with firms like HSBC, Bank of America, American Express, what made you choose this career path?
Mr. Atul K Naval – Thanks Anurag and your team for giving me this opportunity. We have interacted in the past informally, but I think a formal interaction around some of the things that have happened to me in terms of my experience with Nivesh and then my business growth in general is also necessary. It’s really exciting to be a part of this interaction today.
So, coming to your question, see, you’re right, I’ve always managed senior positions in several international banks, but to be honest, those were always in the wholesale banking or institutional banking space. And at the same time I was a multi-asset investor throughout my life, I’ve been doing that. Since I managed my own financial planning very well, I got financially free at the age of 51 and hung my boots, and I was thinking as to what to do after this. So, the first thing which was dear to me, was that I wanted to be an educator. And the idea was to share my experience and my knowledge as a multi-asset investor and help, bring up financial awareness amongst younger adults.
People who are stepping into colleges, stepping out of colleges, getting a new job, or new parents with a kid, that’s how it started. In fact, I started with my own home. When my daughter got married, her husband and I started as a test case with her and it showed good results. Then we were unfortunately hit by COVID and my other business, which is the consulting part on the corporate banking side, basically collapsed. The model kind of went awry. That’s where I kind of put together my new brand, which is “Power My Money”. And that was primarily towards financial education for, again, young adults and, let’s say up to 40, 25 to 40 age, which I later expanded. And while this was happening, I think it was very, very satisfying, something that I still continue.
One of my clients actually asked me, because one of the things that I do, I talk about what all products are available, then people will come with their personal questions, and I would advise them in terms of recommending, seeing what’s good for them or not. And now that they have product knowledge, they asked me why don’t you start offering these products to us? Why do we have to go to multiple shops, or basically touch points or sales points or brokers. And that’s where my journey on the commercial side of Power My Money started.
And now, before that, when I was doing education, I also said, I need to equip myself. So I went and took some certifications. I’m a certified financial education instructor from NFEC USA. And I think that helped to build trust with the clients that here’s a guy who may be a banker, maybe a multi-asset investor, brings a lot of practical knowledge, but he’s also qualified in terms of offering knowledge about personal finance. Now, when the option came for me to move towards a commercial venture, I started looking for who I should tie up with. And somewhere I was looking at a situation where I wanted to be a single sole operator, writer and founder of my company.
And I said, I’m looking for platforms which can assist me in terms of right turnkey basis, right from onboarding to execution, and then kind of supporting So you reached an AUM of 10 crore in just 24 months, which is really, really great. I think very few people are able to do that. So what’s been the secret sauce, if I can ask, something that you’d like to share? What worked in your favor? Okay. Okay, we’ll talk about Nivesh at some point, if there’s a section on that. Why Nivesh? Oh, Nivesh, helped me. You can just combine, you can just talk about how Nivesh helped in this entire process versus what you did, you know. So I’ve always had a background in terms of sales and relationship and having managed businesses. So that came as an advantage. But if somebody wants to start a new business, they need to look at it differently.
And clearly, as I mentioned, I was moving from wholesale and institutional space to retail space. I had to also think differently. So two ways you can look at how I did my journey. One is in terms of the skill set, which is needed for this kind of business, soft skill versus hard skill. And we can look at it that way. I had the technical skills, I had the soft skill. So for me, it was more of the second way to look at how to build this business. Client acquisition is the approach to follow. And this is what I would like to emphasise for all my friends who will be watching this particular interaction, as they step out to grow their business is the approach. So first and foremost, I strongly believe it’s a firm conviction that anything you’re starting, any venture, whether it’s a business or a relationship of any nature, you first of all need to know what’s the purpose of your business, what’s the ikegai in Japanese term? What is the sole purpose of doing this business? Now, most of us may look at this business for monetary benefits, and there’s nothing wrong with that. That’s one key advantage of building this particular business. But also, sometimes, like in my case, there was additional purpose, as I mentioned that I wanted to help, I wanted to share, and give back to the community.
the clients in all forms and fashion. And that’s where after taking my ARN code from AMFI, I was looking around and that’s wheN I came across Nivesh. And that’s where my journey started.
One of the things which I’m also excited about this business, somebody who has been an investment banker, I was also looking for a business which is inflation proof. It is the fact that you want your income to grow as the inflation grows. And so there are certain businesses where, which will always happen, people will always avail those services irrespective of the state of economy.
And this is one business where people know that when we are dealing as distributors of various products, especially when it comes to certain categories of AUMs. Inflation and the markets rise along with that, actually your earnings also grow. So there’s a natural hedge from inflation in this business. And that’s what I started. That’s why I started with this business. Absolutely great to hear. I think knowledge sharing is extremely important in this business. And as you rightly said, opportunities are immense. I think we’re just starting on the path of wealth creation for most Indians. So far, I think this kind of service was only available to the higher end, Ultra customer. But I think now is the time that affluent folks are waking up to the wealth management requirements. And I think we’re seeing a surge of investors coming into mutual funds and other financial assets.
So you’ve reached an AUM of 10 crore in just 24 months, which is really great. Very few people are actually able to do that, so what exactly is your secret sauce? We would love to know what exactly worked in your favour.
So I’ve always had a background in terms of sales and relationships and having managed businesses. So that came as an advantage. But if somebody wants to start a new business, they need to look at it differently.
And as I mentioned, I was moving from wholesale and institutional space to retail space. I had to also think differently. So two ways you can look at how I did my journey. One is in terms of the skill set, which is needed for this kind of business, soft skill versus hard skill, we can look at it that way. I had the technical skills and the soft skills as well. So for me, it was more of the second way to look at how to build this business. Client acquisition is the approach to follow and this is what I would like to emphasise for all my friends who would be reading this particular interaction, first and foremost, I strongly believe it’s a firm conviction that anything you’re starting, any venture, whether it’s a business or a relationship of any nature, you first of all need to know what’s the purpose of your business, what is the sole purpose of doing this business? Now, most of us may look at this business for monetary benefits, and there’s nothing wrong with that. That’s one key advantage of building this particular business. But also, sometimes, like in my case, there was an additional purpose, as I mentioned that I wanted to help, I wanted to share, and give back to the community.
Now, irrespective of where you stand in this particular spectrum, you are somebody who may just earn. I know a friend who’s earning and he just simply as a philanthropist donates that money supporting certain institutions. Whatever your reason for doing this business is, that purpose is something that will help you first of all remain focused on this particular business in terms of when the ups and downs come, you remain focused. Obviously, I think the second part is client acquisition. Now, client acquisitions do not happen in a way that people start coming to you. So the first step I followed was, I put up my Insta pages. I have an Insta page for both my corporate finance, as well as Power my money and LinkedIn posts as well. But more importantly, some of the partners, especially in the smaller towns may not be having these skills to do social media marketing.
Honestly, I don’t do much of social media marketing because my focus is something else. I want to deal with a selected group of clients. But whosoever wants to start this business and grow this business, you need to be active in some form or fashion on a social media platform. The Idea is simply spreading awareness. Now, most of the people make this mistake, they try to kind of force their near and dear ones to start investing through them. Now, that may work for some, but most of the people will realise it doesn’t work because money has a psychological factor around it. Where your near and dear ones specifically don’t want to share their failures, and the success of their wealth with you. However, you still need to talk to them. They might not do business with you, but somebody else in their network is thinking of doing investing, and they need some help, you will come to the top of their mind and then the same near and dear one will give you a referral business.
So that has really helped me. Most of my family and close friends have not invested through me, barring a couple of them, but they’ve given me solid referrals. Create awareness, spread the word, so that as and when any discussion happens into a potential investor’s mind, they know what you are doing, so they can approach you. And obviously, there are several solutions to lead generation, I will not go into that, that’s a very individual decision whether you want to invest in a lead generating solution, I am not. But once you get certain leads through referrals or through social media, you get some people reach out to you.
I normally spend three to four meetings before coming straight to the point of just how much they need to invest to do their goal planning and all. Even as it is as per SEBI, we can only do what we are restricted in terms of our ARN membership as to what we can advise and what we cannot. So one has to be very, very careful. But the idea is be patient, try to understand the client’s needs before you start pitching the products. And very importantly, there are certain programs, which are available on Google, various free platforms which help you understand the money personalities of your potential investors. And that’s something I follow. This helps you fine tune or match your personality style with the person who you’re talking to interact with. So I have used that to my advantage. And that would be helpful if somebody wants to do this with their ample number of free courses.
During those interactions, the idea is to do all the objection handling. I do not pitch the product. I don’t pitch Nivesh. I just talk to them.I hear them out as to what they’re doing. I try to find out who’s the decision maker. If I’m dealing with a couple, I try to get at least the first couple of meetings with both the husband and wife. And the idea is then that their collective responsibility comes in sometimes the leads come from the person who is not active in making those decisions, but is aware that, you know, maybe the other partner is not doing enough and they have concerns and they bring out those anxieties. Now this becomes an opportunity to discuss. Since both of them are there, the other guy who’s the key guy in terms of financial decision making cannot objectify because that’s a true need coming from his family structure. So that is very important. And once objection handling is done, the next step is client onboarding. Now in this process, what has helped me and I think which is what I will tell my other friends is you need to have a solid product knowledge, and not just the product knowledge, also what’s happening in the markets.
And Anurag, you and I know how SEBI and other regulators, as well as not just in any other markets also, regulators have been changing the regulatory landscape pretty fast. And that’s becoming the biggest concern. So most people think objection handling is about returns on the product. But not in my case. I’ve personally seen that it’s more about the fact that they don’t have the time or they’re not educated enough as to what’s happening. Sometimes the returns are also linked. Rather, most times are also linked to the underlying movements, whether it’s monetary policy, whether it’s a regulatory change, dealing with certain kinds of funds only they can invest in when it’s certain markets. There’s a limited scope of investing in mutual funds. You need to be aware of all those things. And that has really helped me in terms of breaking the ice and building trust. And again, when they see that, you know, I’m not even talking about investing. I spent three hours or three meetings with them. And I’m just talking with them. It automatically starts. They start sharing more.
Once that’s done, the MFD’s job is done. And then that’s where Nivesh comes in, because Nivesh as a platform has helped me in terms of managing front end as well as back end, both things seamlessly. Unlike many other distributions that I was trying to tie up with when I was setting up, NIVESH has no fee for becoming a partner. And plus, while there’s a soft push, nobody is going to beat down my neck. And that’s my first condition. Don’t beat down your neck. Nobody’s going to bother you in terms of sales targets. The Idea is to grow this business, enjoy this business while you’re doing it. We are there to support you. And that’s where I found NIVESH really good, not just in terms of the digital interface or the ease of using the app, but more so in terms of the team that you have put up and run. And one thing I also like is the diversity in your team. I see a lot of women in your team as well which is a psychological fact because women handle objections much better than men. So I’ve seen at times in my interactions, a female service RM has given me much more than my RM might give. Nothing wrong about both of them, but it’s just that the trust factor is much higher in case of women. The same thing transpires when they are talking to my clients, when I hand over my client saying this is the objection, this is the issue, can you help? And when they talk, it really helps because when a female is speaking, some of that integrity or the trust factor is higher when you’re dealing with the fair gender. So that’s something very good. And then the basic idea is a good execution. Is that important? Very much. Two things have happened. A good execution has given me a lot of new references. Because when the guy is happy, client satisfaction is good. He’s happy to put his name behind a referral because everybody has this as a niggle in the back of mind. If I, what if I recommend and I’m recommending a close friend of mine and his money doesn’t do well or he faces issues. Once he’s satisfied, he’s happy to do that. The worst is also true. A bad client execution can lead you to a loss of business. So I think client execution is very good. And then comes the most difficult part, maintaining the relationship. And that’s where I think over a period of time, it’s a long tail business. I think you and I discussed it when we were talking some other time. People are investing for long term goals.
Some people are retiring for a lifestyle goal at the age of 60. Some people are talking about education, which is a long term goal. Some people simply want to have wealth creation. When it’s a long term business, you need to have a long term approach. Basically, a relationship approach rather than having a sales approach, which is transactional. Sales is very transactional. A relationship approach will keep the client tied up with you. And then what compounding you’re offering to your customer through the product or the markets, the same compounding happens in your business as well in terms of the AUMs that you can capture from the same client.
Nivesh doesn’t just offer me mutual funds, they’re also offering me products, a wide range of products. They’re offering me the capability of offering all types of insurance just by being a partner, whether I’m qualified as an MFD or not. We can do most of the low risk or medium risk insurance, which we can do within the guidelines. Company FDs, new age products, peer-to-peer lending, you are doing invoice discounting. Now, all these things are adding one extra kind of, you know, ace up your sleeve. You need not be talking to clients about mutual funds. You can actually open the discussion by, and I’ve done that by talking about getting a meeting to talk about some new exciting product that has come, a peer-to-peer, he doesn’t understand. So first you teach them, make them aware. And then whether they invest in B2B or not, you actually create opportunities to talk up again about something else that you want to offer. So that’s how I’ve grown my business.
In addition to my own approach and my skill set, Nivesh has been there as a backbone of the business. A couple of items that I might have missed out. But so I did speak about superior digital interfaces.I spoke about the 24 by seven approach. Your reporting is very nice. In fact, if you’re dealing with HNIs and I have managed my own home office and my own portfolio, there are certain types of reports in certain types of formats, which your CAs will need for tax filing. And that’s what I think your interface in terms of generation of those reports, even an RTA is so simple. I mean, some of my portfolio is sitting on some other platform because I can’t be dealing with my own money as a distributor. But I’ve seen, I can compare how easy it is to execute an order, follow the order, the reporting part, very easy.
And the best thing is when I teach my clients to do these things. A, they feel empowered. B, less time I have to spend on managing those basic needs like downloading a capital gains realised report. Yeah. And last but not the least is your product and market research. Now, to give you an anecdote. I have a couple of overseas clients. One of them is a CFO in a fintech company. And we have had discussions on not just one India, but US in general, some of the markets and the team that you have does give us information in terms of when Fed meetings happen. We don’t get the complete detail like an investment banker I used to get, but you do get snippets in terms of what transpired basic parameters on the US economy, which is the largest economy. And then again, some markets. Euro, I think they cover a bit. And in detail, Indian markets. Very, very helpful.
I, in fact, look at that thing. And if there’s no internal information, I forward those. I first went through that. There’s nothing internal meant for partners, but can be shared with the clients. I do share with the clients. So it’s like a regular reminder going to them. There’s somebody who is helping them. Somebody is looking after their portfolios, trying to teach them more, make them more, keep them informed. And even products, the regular calls that we have, whether it’s insurance or any other new product. I think those things have been excellent. So I must recommend you and your team in terms of putting up this platform. I must say I’m a stickler for perfection. I love your platform. It’s really great to hear your insights and really, you know, you know, I think I can’t thank you enough for giving us this motivation. And I think the relationship has worked really well because we look at ourselves as a platform that can help the wealth manager or an end to end. And your role is to engage with the customer, provide all the insights, knowledge and help them on their journey. And that’s what we really aspire for. And it makes us really happy when we see that relationship really working out the way we had thought when we started this initiative. So really, really good. But any particular feature that you like within Neeraj and do your clients log in and they also… So the best thing you have done is this cart feature. I don’t have to look at anything coming from the BSE star and then go there, clicking a link.
Sometimes you click a link through email. You can’t put the OTP because that’s coming. That was a pain. Here you’re getting a four-digit code. One single code comes to SMS. In Less than five seconds trade is done. Now I started teaching kids. Basically, I do goal-based investing. And I use the goal feature very well. Of course, there are certain changes that I may still need in terms of being able to modify or move one from one more to another. But that’s feedback I’m sure being looked into. But primarily, my customers today know if they want to redeem. They just simply inform, I need 24,000 bucks. I’m redeeming this for this goal. I say, go ahead. And I can always see, as they’re doing, I can see in my app, I can see what they have put. I think a notification also comes that this guy is doing this much. And then I see and they find it very easy because everybody’s used to an SMS-based OTP.
Various things we do in life, whether it’s purchases on Amazon, everywhere. So this is the best feature you have done, really.
But what’s your advice to somebody who wants to get into this profession?
Well, I think the first couple of things I touched about, which were on the value side, where I said integrity, trust. Integrity helps you build trust. Transparency is very important. And I don’t think anybody needs to be scared of the fact that we do get commission on the funds. So, you know, there’s a raging dialogue. So when we, when the industry started Mutual Fund, that initiative has its own advantage. And that’s the right spirit, you know, that customer, the investors are aware, they are aware as to what it takes.
Now, what is also happening is there’s a lot of misinformation also, which is spread by parties, typically some fintechs, who claim that they’re not charging any money. But again, there’s no free lunch, as we all know. So somewhere else, they’re making money. Now can we question them? Do we question them? Now, coming to somebody who wants to be in this business, don’t be scared. This is not the end of it. This is just one of the objections. Take it as an objection handling, which is generated through some industry spread, some partners, some portion of the industry, which is spreading misinformation. You have other objection handling, which will come from various psychological issues, or let’s say, I’m dealing with a couple, their money investing style, their backgrounds, how they learned about money management, all those things happen. So you need to have patience, perseverance, just like any other business.
And that’s why I said, if you know why you’re in this business, then I think you are remaining focused. And the second part is using the tools. And tools is primarily one is for as a customer, lifecycle, right from onboarding to maintaining until exit, whenever that exit happens, let’s say somebody retires and starts using. Actually, it’s a more interesting part when you go into retirement, that’s a far more complex kind of a thing where you would actually nobody ever exits your business if you’ve done your job well, because that’s where when they stop earning money, you actually give them more advice. So this is an exciting business. And again, you do not know. So when we do a retirement planning, and this is for my friends who might be watching this, you are looking at inflation risk, and then you’re building out a portfolio saying this is the corpus we need to do, this is a retirement, which is 30 years hence, 20 years hence. But the same inflation risk, you cannot quantify, along with the longevity risk that you can’t quantify when you’re looking at retirement planning. So guys, this is a business which if you build well, if you stick to this business, this business is completely inflation proof. As the economy grows in an inflationary economy, GDP grows, business grows, investments will grow, your AUM grows, your commissions grow. And be transparent, even if SEBI requires, first of all, SEBI requires us to be transparent in terms of the products, we are offering regular funds. So why be scared about that? And have the conviction. I always tell my clients when we talk about what’s in it for me, and I say, I’m expecting trust from you. I’m expecting transparency from you. And I offer transparency in the sense, I have a family where two brothers are managing through me. And that’s the trust I build that one brother will not know what another brother’s revenues or our income is. That’s the trust we need to build. And that will happen only if as a partner, you have a very strong conviction that you are there to help people. So think of not this as money making, because once you start looking at just making money, then you are also becoming transactional. You’re not bothered about relationships. So build your relationship with the money also. That’s my line to my clients.
Can we teach our clients to build that relationship with the money? And you do as a partner with them, helping them how to realise the relationship money. So move away from transactional, think big. Things will happen. Money is a byproduct. Build your business. This business is like a royalty business. I also say, write a book. One piece book sales, you get a trickle. It’s like that. You build your business, your AM automatically grows as the market grows. The reverse is also true.
But hopefully, you write, you do a long term business, you write the market trust. And you are a winner. Absolutely. In fact, I can tell you like the time that you’ve taken to come to 10 crore, I think in a similar time frame, you’ll get 50 crore. That’s the power of this business. And you know, that 50 to 100. And so sky’s the limit. It all depends on, you know, how well you execute, how much time. It’s like the margin velocity. There’s a margin velocity. You come a point where business goes, shoots. And that’s the level one needs to reach. Till then business is very hard. But once you start seeing the results, you start enjoying this business. For me personally, this business also gives you a lot of time. So somebody who’s my age, or let’s say thinking of starting something new, you have done your bit, you are trying to be gainfully employed, maybe for money, maybe not for money. This is one thing. It gives you ample time to do things that are on your bucket list, as well as helps me manage my own portfolio. And I mean, now applying reverse learnings from my client portfolios to my own portfolio. Right. So when I start out, I’m saying I’m a multi-asset investor. I bring an experiential kind of learning and approach to managing your money. I am also benefiting. So this business gives you back to even manage some of those solutions for your own business. Because all of us have a classic blind spot somewhere. We don’t see those things which can work for us also. Yes. Yes. It’s a win-win. It’s a win-win. Great, great Atul. Great talking to you. And congratulations again. Best wishes for the future. And we’ll keep in touch. Thank you. Thank you so much for your time. Thanks a lot for your time. And I appreciate your finding time to interact with me today. Always a pleasure speaking to partners like you, Atul. Thank you.
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