October 26, 2024 • 58 mins
From the high-stakes trading floors of Goldman Sachs to revolutionizing investment access in India, Ram Tulluri's journey is a masterclass in purpose-driven entrepreneurship.
As the founder of Shrish Infotech and creator of WealthUpp, Ram is tackling a crucial challenge: while India's NIFTY 50 has delivered 20X returns since 2000, 95% of Indians haven't participated in this wealth creation.In this episode, Ram shares his transition from IIT Madras to Wall Street, and ultimately to founding a fintech startup in Hyderabad. He breaks down how WealthUpp is democratizing mutual fund investing through its innovative app, making systematic investing accessible to every Indian. With India projected to become the world's third-largest economy by 2050, Ram's vision of inclusive wealth creation couldn't be more timely.
You'll learn:
As the founder of Shrish Infotech and creator of WealthUpp, Ram is tackling a crucial challenge: while India's NIFTY 50 has delivered 20X returns since 2000, 95% of Indians haven't participated in this wealth creation.In this episode, Ram shares his transition from IIT Madras to Wall Street, and ultimately to founding a fintech startup in Hyderabad. He breaks down how WealthUpp is democratizing mutual fund investing through its innovative app, making systematic investing accessible to every Indian. With India projected to become the world's third-largest economy by 2050, Ram's vision of inclusive wealth creation couldn't be more timely.
You'll learn:
- Why Ram left his successful Wall Street career to start WealthUpp
- How small, consistent investments (just ₹100/day) could grow to ₹1 Crore over 15 years
- The technology behind WealthUpp's soon-to-be-patented investment algorithms
- Practical insights into building sustainable investing habits
- Ram's perspective on India's economic trajectory and the opportunities ahead
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
This is the startup Still Say podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:02):
Thank you for tuning in. You as a favor like
subscribe on YouTube or LinkedIn, and be sure to give
us your feedback. Hope you enjoyed this episode him. Welcome
everyone for another episode of Start with Delsey.
Speaker 1 (00:14):
I'm with Gore your co host alongside Anthony Percash, and
today we welcome Roun here, who's the founder for Welthop
and the CEO of sure Ram. Why don't you kick
us off with an introduction and background about yourself.
Speaker 3 (00:28):
Hi, Anthony and Haride.
Speaker 4 (00:29):
First of all, thank you for taking time in inviting
me to your podcast.
Speaker 3 (00:34):
So yeah, my name is rom Thluri.
Speaker 4 (00:36):
I'm the CEO of She's Infoteke and I'll basically be
talking about welt up and what that is as a
by product of So before that my background IM a
graduate of I Madras and right after that I went
to the US and I did my masters and I
worked in Wall Street for about fifteen years to mainly
(00:57):
in the financial industry. Worked in the Goal in Goldman's
Acts for about ten years as a vice president on
the technology side, and it so happened that I was
more involved in the financial aspects of Goldman.
Speaker 3 (01:11):
I mean technology.
Speaker 4 (01:12):
So I was part of a surveillance team, which has
to do with you know, surveilling a lot of the
trades that happened and the trades coming from different types
of instruments and products. So I kind of forgot a
very in depth knowledge of what, you know, what these
instruments are, what are the different products out there in
the financial market. So that led me to you know
(01:34):
a lot of domain knowledge, and around I would say
two thousand and nine, I migrated back to India. So
since then I have started this company, Stysyfotech, and it's
already already been about fifteen years now and you know,
part of that journey we have done, you know, service
various clients, mainly in the financial domain. And that's how
(01:58):
I happened to know of Anthony as well. So apart
from that, I mean because of my background and domain
knowledge in financial domain, so I ended up doing always
trying to come up with some product innovative products in
the financial domain, and Wealth Up is one of them,
and I'll be talking more about what that is.
Speaker 5 (02:19):
I must say, rum after fifteen years in Wall Street,
you still have all your hair intacts are pretty commandable.
So what let's maybe touch upon Wall Street experience and
what you did after that rum. I mean, why the
(02:39):
I mean, obviously Wall Street is super exciting or at
the same time very stressful, as a lot of people say,
what made you actually roll up your sleeves and say, Okay,
I mean I've done enough in the US, Let's move
back to India and start.
Speaker 6 (02:55):
Your own gig. Why the entrepreneurial journey.
Speaker 3 (02:58):
Yeah, that's a good question. So I think it has
two main reasons.
Speaker 4 (03:02):
One is my family reason, which is my dad was
kind of going through some kind of Parkinson's kind of issues.
Speaker 3 (03:11):
At that time.
Speaker 4 (03:11):
And you know, we have two brothers. My elder brother
also lives in the US, so it's I'm the younger one.
So it was easier for me to come back to
India and take care of my family.
Speaker 3 (03:23):
So that was one main reason.
Speaker 4 (03:24):
And as the driver, because my mom was alone and
it's very tough to take care of somebody who's going through,
you know, mental issues. So that is one I think
I thought when I come back, I didn't want to
work for some somebody again, I mean, I have gone
through a lot of that in the Wall State, so
I wanted to start something on my own, and so
(03:44):
that's why I thought, Okay, why not you know, being
a technologist, in the first thing you do is start
a technology firm.
Speaker 3 (03:52):
So it's a development center in India.
Speaker 4 (03:56):
So you know, we do service a lot of clients
and you S and UK as well.
Speaker 3 (04:01):
So that's how it started.
Speaker 5 (04:03):
And all of your India operations is based out.
Speaker 6 (04:06):
Of Hyderabad right now. I mean, or do you have
multiple anyone else?
Speaker 4 (04:09):
No? No, most of the development happens in Okay, and
I have I do have consultants who work all over India,
so but mainly India based.
Speaker 5 (04:19):
Yeah, okay, got it. So I mean we're here to
obviously double click on welt up. Wealth up is a
brand new offering coming out of your wealth of experience
in the financial industry. And why don't we speak about
wealth up. I mean your new initiative, which you've probably
(04:41):
unwrapped very slowly, right, I mean, I think there are
a few pilot users on it. But why didn't you
tell the audience about what wealth up is and what
do you intend people to use it for and how
can they benefit out of it?
Speaker 6 (04:56):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (04:57):
Definitely.
Speaker 4 (04:57):
So wealth up is a product of Synfotech and this
is something we have been working on since last two years.
It's an app Basically the main manthra if wealth is
to grow your wealth and small investment today. So I
think that says a lot, but I think mainly the
idea is to help anybody like a common person to
(05:21):
be able to invest in Indian market. And if you
look at the you know, what's happening in India for
the last past twenty years, right, is a tremendous growth
in India, especially when you look at the GDP itself
and has grown from two point three trillion dollars to
three point five trillion dollars in the last fifteen years.
And that's actually translated into you know financial market as well.
(05:46):
If you look at THEFTY to fifteen index, which is
similar to what you have in Dow Jones in US, right,
you look at it, that index grew from twenty five
hundred in two thousand and eight time period to twenty
five thousand now such about eight and in person you
know height, and you know there's a lot of people
made money on it and a lot of people lost
(06:07):
also in you know, doing the wrong type of investment.
But the thing is that this growth is just not
reflect to of the index itself. But you see that
if you have come to Indias fifteen years back and
you saw India now let's say, huge difference in terms
of infrastructure, in terms of healthcare, in terms of you know, airports,
(06:28):
roads and a lot of stuff that's that's different from
what you have seen twenty years back in India. And
that's a reflect of what is happening in India in
terms of investment that's getting in, how the industries are growing,
and that the GDP also reflects that point. Right. So,
but if you look at that opportunity within that fifteen
twenty years of opportunity, that you don't see too many
(06:49):
Indians actually investing into Indian market. I mean, if you
just statistically speaking, it's only five percent of Indians actually
have invested in the past fifteen years. And then I
a person or left out in a way because they
don't know how to invest, what invest in, when to
invest in, and even things like why which they should invest.
I mean, most of the time, you know, people put
(07:12):
into FD switch a fixed deposits in banks and they're
happy with five maybe six percent returns on them. But
they think that you know, Again, even people who are
aware of this financial you know, opportunities, they feel that
it's too risky or they might not be even knowledgeable
to do that. I mean, there are people who have
(07:32):
good disposable income and they do get advice from financial
advisors and they do invest. But again that's a very
small percentage, right, So if that opportunity was there, I mean,
just to give you in numbers, right, if somebody had
invested let's say one hundred apiece per day since past
(07:53):
fifteen years, every day, right forgetting about market ups and downs,
you know, ignoring all those things, they would have ended
up with about crew rupee in their bank. Right, that's
the develop that they could have accumulated. It's a simple thing.
I mean, a strategy that's well you know age old strategy,
well proven, low risk strategy, which is you know, just
(08:15):
to put one hundred dollars rupees a month, sorry, per
day and your wealthill grow because you know, if financial
markets are growing at that speed, you would accumulate that much.
That that's an opportunity that was there fifteen years, in
the past fifteen years, and people didn't take advantage. But
if you look at what is happening in the next
twenty years, right that the projections are right now, India
(08:38):
is fifth largest economy and it's projected to be going
to third largest economy maybe by twenty fifty. So that
actually means that the GDP will grow from three point
five trillion to about twenty five trillion. So now look
at the what is the impact on financial markets because
(09:00):
of that? I mean it will be tremendous impact compared
to you know, forget about what happened in the last
fifteen years, right, I mean this growth that you'll see
in the next twenty years will be even larger. And
again you see who's going to benefit from there or
all the business people people who are investing from outside
people have good disposable income and good advice advisors advising
(09:22):
on you know, how to invest. But again the ninety
fair person will be left out. So if somebody who's
working let's say about fifty thousand one lap per month
salary right now around that, which is majority of Indians do,
so they'll be the way they are. I mean, they
won't see too much growth in their financial situation except
that maybe there'll be more jobs and they will be
(09:46):
you know, more paque because just a to inflation. They
will see that, they'll be racist in prey, they pay scale,
but the savings and the wealth accumulation won't happen. It
will be like somebody who has been even if will
take somebody who has been earning let's say teacher, right,
thirty thousand rupees, I'm pretty sure that they won't have
accumulated a crow rupee in the last fifteen years, although
(10:09):
they had an opportunity to do that, right, So looking
at what is the potential that we are looking at
for the next twenty years, Again, that opportunity needs to
be tapped in a certain way, in some way, and
welcome actually helps you do that.
Speaker 3 (10:23):
So now you understand the opportunity.
Speaker 4 (10:27):
So now if you look at is what are the
ways that we can tap into that hardness that opportunity
is obviously somebody who's very good at investing in stocks
and stocks and options and any other instruments. I mean,
you need to be an expert, you need to be
really good at it, you need to be on top
of it every day. So it's pretty risky as well, right,
(10:48):
I mean coming from a financial domain, again, my government
experience tells me what I've seen throughout my thirty years
in financial industry that people really who makes it are
pretty good, but again they go through a lot of
stress and a lot of people actually end up losing
as well.
Speaker 3 (11:08):
In playing all these games.
Speaker 4 (11:09):
Right, it's but I mean apart from all the financial
in what they ore to say, institutions, right, they make
good money. But I think general common man, I mean,
who's into stocks and options? Usually it's very tough. I mean,
if you ask somebody have they made about fifteen or
one crore in the last fifteen years by investing in stocks,
(11:29):
you won't find too many people, right, because that's not
the right way for a majority of us. So now
what is the other option you have? I mean the
other option is again you have to go to your
financial advisor and find out what is the best way
to invest. But again your financial advisors don't advise people
who have less disposably become right, unless you have good
amount of money, they don't cater to them. So the
(11:52):
third option is obviously other way of investing things like
in India we call it SIP systematic investment land, which
is to invest about maybe ten fifteen thousand, depending on
what your salaries or or basically is you can invest that,
but then that SIP is done on.
Speaker 3 (12:12):
A monthly basis.
Speaker 4 (12:14):
It expects that you have that money in the first
week of the month, on in a particular day of
a month, and you expect that that investment will happen
in the right right timing because market could be up
and down, it doesn't matter. So it has to happen
on the first of month of a month. It has
to happen. It doesn't matter which you know, whether the
market is upper down. So there's a risk involved in
(12:36):
putting a bulk of money on one time once a month.
So that's something that you know it's not the right
or the best way to invest. Right. So now what
wealthub does is it has this strategy called clear Clear
is nothing but consistency stands is consistent L stands for
lu entry E stands or efficient A stands or automated
(12:59):
completely automated, and our stands were risk egisted. So I'll
explain what this means as a strategy, and then I'll
explain what Wealth does to implement this strategy. Right, So
consistent means the again I was saying the month rise
invest daily, right invest small amounts daily and consistently. Right,
So every day you take under rupiece of two hun
(13:22):
piece or three d piece whatever you can afford to
and put that amount and be consistent in doing that. Right.
So then low entry, as I was saying, like, you
don't need to have a huge amount of money to
get into market and benefit from growing your wealth because
you have the opportunity now, So you don't need to
have ten thousand rupees, right, you can maybe have two
(13:43):
hundred rupees on a day. I mean that sequel into
maybe like having a breakfast in India. I mean you
can get chai coffee and some small snack for two
hundred rupees now, I mean that's what people use. I
mean spend on that. So that much money you can
spend on your savings as well. So we have the
month right here is to think of your savings as
(14:05):
an expense as well, right, which is a small amount
on a daily basis. So that's a rule entry, So
you don't have to have too much money to be
getting too investing and growing your wealth. Right.
Speaker 3 (14:16):
And the next thing is efficiency.
Speaker 4 (14:18):
So because you are putting on a daily basis, it
doesn't matter whether it stocks has gone up or down.
Speaker 3 (14:26):
For the day market is done.
Speaker 4 (14:29):
If you look at last week, I mean, you know,
the whole world has gone through a cycle of you know, dip,
but it doesn't matter. You're investing and buying into the
day and if the market has gone up, okay, it
doesn't matter because you're investing in small and you're growing
your money by putting some more money. So your efficiency
in that investing is you know, pretty much in there
(14:51):
if you're doing.
Speaker 3 (14:52):
A daily investment.
Speaker 4 (14:54):
And automation, I mean, what we have done with Wealth
Up is that once you're onboarded doesn't have to do anything. Uh,
it's completely automated. There's a concept of emandate in India.
I think it's pretty much there for you guys as well.
I guess in the US. Emmanded basically lets the banks
(15:14):
take a mandate from the customer letting vendors, you know,
take pay for example, Google pay might get an invoice,
it gets automatically get paid things like that's right. So similarly,
you can have an e mandate for investment as well.
So that is the automation. And then and then I'll
talk more about automation as well. And the secret that
(15:35):
the last one hour stands for risk adjusted, so it's
adjusted to the customer risk profile based on how much
they risk they can take and whether they're doing high
risk or medium risk alories. The app does adjust itself
to what their risk levels are and then invest in
the right way. So that is a whole ideas. That's
(15:56):
a clear strategy. We call it right and I can
any questions you have if you have any, or I
can just move into how wealth up actually implements this
clear star.
Speaker 2 (16:06):
I'm curious to hear.
Speaker 5 (16:09):
I do have a question though, so so h I mean,
first of all, just to summarize Wealth up for everyone, right,
I mean, Wealth up is a brand new app where
you can take small amounts of money, Like you said,
it could be one hundred whatever you can afford. It
could be as small as one hundred a piece per
(16:30):
day invest through the app consistently in the Indian market.
And that could be that that part is essentially managed
by wealth up to say you know whether it's going
to be in mutual funds or you know stocks, I
mean you have a default way by which you can
(16:51):
divide that money or invest that money rather, or they
can choose to do that. I'm assuming like much like
four oh, one k that sort of thing. And your approach,
with the clear framework and methodology is that, I mean, okay,
consistently invest.
Speaker 6 (17:07):
Over a long period of time.
Speaker 5 (17:11):
The GDP is growing, the spending power is growing, India
as a country is growing.
Speaker 6 (17:16):
So there's a.
Speaker 5 (17:17):
Really good chance that, I mean, all this money that
you're investing is going to be directly proportional to that
growth as well. And ten years down the line, fifteen
years down the line, you're going to be sitting on
a good chunk of money which you've not really planned for.
Right now, you don't have to make big, risky bets.
Hence the approach of you know, small tiny droplets, if
(17:43):
you will, which will make that big pond or lake
or in this case ocean as you're selling it. Right, So,
did I summarize.
Speaker 6 (17:52):
That right on?
Speaker 3 (17:54):
Yeah, that is true, I think.
Speaker 2 (17:55):
So.
Speaker 4 (17:56):
The idea here is that to invest small and you know,
people who are just started to work, maybe somebody who's
in twenty five years old. Within twenty years, you know,
they might have about two crows or three crows in
their hand if you know, this to this kind of strategy,
strategic investment, and that's something that with small amounts. You
(18:18):
are not going to be in that position if you
didn't do that, right, so, or you know that could
be usedful when they have their kids. You know, in India,
marriage and education or two things that people. I think
that's true for the rest of the world as well.
But I think you know, you in India, marriage and
education or the most expense uh, you know, fact items
(18:41):
in the financial planning. So when people are about forty
years or forty five, you need to have that much
money or saved up. So if somebody is starting around
twenty five, just got married and this is the right
time to do that, I mean keep that as a
long term you know, savings plan or strategy. It doesn't
(19:02):
have to be the only strategy, but it could be
that this is one of the strategies of best low
risk strategy that you can do. Uh. And somebody who's
in forty I mean they want to retire by the
time they are sixty with about two three cloths in
their hand. And again this is a strategy, right. If not,
they would not have that kind of money in there
when they retire. Right. So again, this is not to
(19:23):
buy a car or buy a house, right, you know,
that's not what we're looking at. So this is the strategy. Obviously,
if you want to invest more maybe a thousand rupieces
a day, and then it's a different thing. I mean
you could actually gain more I mean within shorter time.
But you know, somebody who wants to you know, can
dispose off only like a few hundreds a day. And
(19:45):
this is strategy, which is a long term strategy. Right.
Speaker 3 (19:49):
So again, I think.
Speaker 4 (19:51):
India is even if you don't do that in any
in some format, that if you're not investing in India,
then you will be left out. I mean India will row,
but you're not going to be part of it. Right.
So that's a very strong message because you know you
will be where you are, but you'll see that India
has grown. I mean, you know that's that's the financial
inclusion is very important and this is one one way
(20:15):
to do that. Even if you look at what is
happening here in India is that the government itself is
encouraging people to invest, especially in mutual funds and you
see ads about it all the time. So and they're
doing it because they want people to be you know,
involved in this and included in this financial growth. So
you know what Wealth up does is to enable that,
(20:38):
right in a very smart and automated way. So I'll
just move on to how Wealth up implements this strategy then, so.
Speaker 3 (20:50):
Clear clear strategy.
Speaker 4 (20:51):
So first thing is when you're onboarded into wealth up,
you you there's a KYC process which basically you know,
there are a lot of reglationis in India now for
investing which are pretty good. I mean they it has streamlined.
There a lot of technologies platforms which have come up
which enable you know a lot of electronic investment and
(21:12):
you know kyic checks and everything. So in wealth Up,
within fifteen twenty minutes, somebody could be onboarded, the KC
could be validated in fifteen minutes and they'll be an
investor in India in fifteen minutes, right, So that is
a huge thing. I mean, this kind of technology integration
is not there may be two three years back now
it is. So what Wealth up does is to use
(21:34):
that integrations. I mean their government agencies which help us
do that, and there are other private platforms which are
integrated to do that. So within fifteen twenty minutes you're
onboarded and your KYS is done, You're ready to invest
and you don't have to as a customer.
Speaker 3 (21:51):
You don't have to do anything else in Wealth up.
Speaker 4 (21:53):
Wealth Up basically when you're onboarding, it asks you how
much do you on investor on a daily basis. On
a weekly basis, you can pick you know your number
of days days that you want to invest or. It
could be monthly, three or four times in a month,
some particular days.
Speaker 3 (22:08):
You know you could do all that right there, I'll
show you in a demo.
Speaker 4 (22:11):
So once you have configured that, then there's two options.
One is that completely automanaged, which basically means that wealth
up has tied up with investment advisors who advise Wealth
Up on what are the best mutual funds on a
given period, and basically the daily amount is then will
(22:34):
be distributed into those funds based on the customer risk
profile and you divide for all the customers. All customers
set to medium risk profile, but they can change it,
and based on the risk profile, the funds get bought.
And the good thing about Wealth up in terms of
security is that the mandates that we take the e
(22:55):
mandate to take the payment is a pay mandate which
the bad gives only for the purchase of mutual funds
on behalf of the customer whose bank the mutual funds
are bought on behalf the customer's name, which matches the
bank account name. So what it means is the mandate
cannot be used for anything else, even to buy stocks.
(23:17):
I mean Wealth Up is not to buy stocks, only
mutual funds. It invests only mutual funds. So the money
goes directly from the bank to the mutual fund companies
they call asset management companies, which are like I S,
hdfcs and all those guys who actually sell the mutual funds.
The money goes directly from the bank to the mutual
(23:38):
fund companies to buy a particular mutual fund. So what
wealthup is doing is just initiating the transaction. They're saying,
you know, this customer needs to buy two hundred rupees
worth of mutual funds of this particular mutual fund. So
and this is the AMC, which is the mutual fund company,
send the money. So the money gives. It's transferred directly.
(24:01):
There's no middleman, there's no wallet here. You know, money
is not kept anywhere for later purchases. It's just money
gets directly transferred immediately to the mutual fund company. Obviously,
the mutual mutual fund company might take about one to
two days to fulfill the order and get the notification
that it has done it. Even mutual fund companies actually
(24:24):
directly email the customer once the purchase has been done.
So the complete transparency and it's very straightforward. And as
we were saying, like bup is just an integrator or
an engine which basically enables this whole process. It automation,
but it doesn't involved in selling mutual funds or involved
in any way handling your the customer money. Right, so
(24:47):
that's the security feature right here. So now you know,
as we're saying, like, once the onboarding is done automatically,
every day, you know, whatever the customer has enabled as
as they daily investment, that investment gets into various mutual
funds based on the risk profile on a daily basis. Right,
So that is what the auto managed. And if the
(25:09):
customer chooses to say, okay, I know what I have
to invest in which mutual funds and they can choose
to do that too. And one of the great uh,
you know what is this algorithm that we have come
up with which will be very unique and we want
to patent it as well. We are going through the
process for that is that taking a small amount like
one hundred rupees and two hundred piece and be able
(25:30):
to distribute across various funds risk managed risk adjested funds
is the challenge. Right. For example, if I give you
ten lacks and I say put it in, put it
fifty percent in high risk, thirty percent in medium risk,
in twenty percent reload is it's very easy. You'll put
you file ax in here, relax in your full lax
in here.
Speaker 5 (25:50):
Right.
Speaker 4 (25:50):
But if I'm taking small amounts on a daily basis
and still be able to make sure that your risk
is adjusted, profile is redgisted according to your investment, that
very challenging. So that's so that there's an algorithm that
we came up with which basically ensures that by end
of maybe a certain time that you're you know, on
(26:11):
a daily basis. The algorithm we look at to see
what is the best fund to invest in and also
how to invest making sure that your your risk profile
is intact.
Speaker 2 (26:23):
Right.
Speaker 4 (26:23):
So, although you're doing a small invest the same thing
with your self managed which is basically you pick your
own mutual funds. You say that in first fund one
you want to invest thirty person fund to fifty percent,
fund three twenty percent and again the engine will make
sure that the distribution of your funds on a daily basis,
you know, or adhering to that percentages. Although you're doing
(26:45):
a really small investment. And the good thing what happened
in India in the last I would say two years,
is that even you can buy a mutual fund for
a good one hundred rupees right the fund value might
be the price of the fund might be about fifty rupees,
so you get two units. Right, So before that they
were like, you know, your minimum mement fus five thousand rupees.
(27:07):
So obviously he said, you know, you can do much
with it with one hundred upees. So now there are
a lot of funds which are even for one hundred rupees.
There are funds which are two hundred dupeces, the funds
which are five hundred thousands. So you based on how
much you are investing your daily investment is the engine
will determine which is the fund that it has to invest. Right,
(27:28):
so it's completely automated, so your hands free, imaine, you
don't have to go to the app every day. You
get WhatsApp notifications, you get emails and what's happening. You
get emails on your daily report and activity, what is
happening And obviously you get emails from the AMC companies
as well on what purchases have been done on behalf
of you. So all this is automated. So even for
(27:49):
a sophisticated customers, they can pick their own funds and
all this stuff. Right, any questions, I mean I will
talk more, but let me open up questions now I
want to.
Speaker 1 (27:58):
Ask from so like I think this is you're going
after the safety too, right with the mutual funds.
Speaker 2 (28:04):
Right, it's all safe, It's all on the safe societ.
It's not a high risk recur to the stocks.
Speaker 1 (28:09):
Growing up in India, I know savings was definitely rooted
in investing was never so I would think the biggest
hurdle is even educating people about like what investment in
wealth building means, not just saving.
Speaker 2 (28:24):
So how are you trying to overcome that?
Speaker 5 (28:26):
Right?
Speaker 1 (28:26):
So I get that this is the aggregator, but even
to bring people to that platform where they can go
and do this, and how does that value?
Speaker 2 (28:32):
So how's that education being?
Speaker 4 (28:34):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (28:35):
So yeah, that's a good question.
Speaker 4 (28:37):
So I think I was saying before, I think a
lot of people don't know why they have to invest.
So once they cross why, there is what and how
and when and things like that. But why is the question.
But I think it's all about educating. As I was saying,
I think I'll tell you one example. My gardener who
makes about forty thousand. I mean he makes forty thousand
(28:57):
believing he works in your ten twenty houses and he
makes money. He works very hard, and I was just
talking to him a few days back and I told him,
I mean, you work so much. I mean, how much
have you accumulated in terms of your wealth? And he
has not much balance, right, and he keeps asking me
to borrow some money from me. So I was telling him, okay,
(29:18):
if you invest one hundred rupees a day in twenties,
he's about forty years old now and in twenty years
you will have about a crew repiece. That interesting proposition
to you. So he was very excited. And I think
it's about explaining them opportunity. And believe me, he was
here in my office yesterday and to get onboarded. So
(29:38):
I think the thing is that they have to understand
the concept of compounding interest, componing returns, and that's something
that has to be educated at a for somebody like
who's not He doesn't know anything about stocks, he doesn't
know anything about financial markets, nothing. But the moment I
explained to him, it just took me fight minutes to
(30:00):
say what his wealth could be. Right, Otherwise, there's no
way that he'll have a crow rupine in his hand
when he's sixty.
Speaker 3 (30:08):
There's no way.
Speaker 4 (30:10):
Right. So obviously he has some lands and all this
stuff in his village, but that's different, right, hard cash.
Having one crore in your hand when you're sixty is
a big deal in India. So that's with one hundred
upiece a day. He is like, okay, I eate one
hundred red pieces a day. I spent two hundred dupeaces.
It's something, I mean, we don't know how it goes off, right,
(30:31):
It gets spent every day. So for me to save
one hundred pieces a day is not a big deal.
And if you're saying that it's going to give me
a crul in twenty years from now, he was on board.
So that's the thing. I think that's a message that
has to be you know, given and it has to
be educated in that way. But I think people have
(30:53):
to understand the opportunity first and the strategies or you know,
whether they go with Wealth Up or any other thing.
But people investing into financial markets in India is the
right thing to do as of now, and and doing
it in safe way and doing using Wealth Up is
one of the I would say a better alternative that
(31:13):
we have in India right now. So I think it's yeah,
I think basically it's all keeping people. I think. I'll
tell you I was talking to a teachers group and
teachers make about forty thousand or fifty thousand per month,
and it was it didn't take me much time to convince,
(31:34):
you know, a group of teachers because they're quite well educated.
They understand that, you know, they are they need to invest,
but they don't know how to invest right. So there
are segments of uh, you know, target target customers who
don't know why, and there are segments whould know why
but they don't know how. So I need to, you know,
(31:54):
dig in and you come up with different messages for
different sectors of these customers. And that's the challenge. But
I think that's what we have to that's what we
are trying to, you know, put our old marketing strategy
around that.
Speaker 5 (32:06):
If I'm not wrong, I mean even for the blue
collar crowd, right, I mean.
Speaker 6 (32:13):
You know, your gardener or.
Speaker 5 (32:15):
Anyone in that sort of occupation. I mean there used
to be this concept of maybe still is the whole
concept of chip funds and all that in India, right yeah,
I mean a lot of them end up being bad stories,
sad stories, right than the good stories. I mean, in
a way, you're cutting the middleman out, giving them the
power to do what you want. I mean, in this
(32:38):
particular case, you know you have the strategy, it is
low risk as well, and then it's a consistent investment.
So maybe it's you're drawing parallels to that particular model,
but I mean in a way they are fully in
control and not trusting a middle man who might run
away with that money.
Speaker 4 (32:58):
Right yeah. Cheat funds is something, as you rightly indicate it. Uh,
it's a big concept in India and a lot of
blue collar people do that. I think it's as you indicated,
it's they.
Speaker 3 (33:11):
Are risk involved.
Speaker 4 (33:13):
But the intention of putting something into chat fund is
also is different. It's for short term, uh, as you
know gain of it's not wealth. Actually, it's basically access
to a chunk of money for short term usage. For example,
if somebody wants to say I need and lax to
buy you know, something buike or something right, so then
(33:37):
they will say, okay, I'll put into cheat fund. I'll
you know, get that money at a discounted rate so
and then use it. So it's not really a wealth
accumulating as a strategy or process, but it's mainly for
you know, you're covering your needs, you know, financial needs,
(33:58):
so for short term, right. But what we are saying is,
you know, long term, I think the ideas to assuming
that in the will grow ideas to be making these
everybody be part of it and uh and in a
very low risk way. I think mutual funds is why
we choose the path to go with. So again it's
(34:19):
long term. Keeping that in mind, I always tell my
customers that we have limit customers from gardener to Pujari,
you know, to people are putting about thousands pieces a
day into wealth up so they are you know, I'm
getting my id folks also professors and people like that
(34:41):
also be part of this. Uh So there are you know,
as I speak to more people. I mean there are
a lot of people not investing because they don't know
too much about investing, so they are quite excited. I
think for me, they told you like different target customers,
I need to have different messages, but they need to
be understood about what investment is all about and what
(35:05):
the benefits. And somebody knows about investing, but they don't
know how to do it. So it's different tigments of
customers that we need to.
Speaker 1 (35:12):
I think, sorry, really good, oh thank you, so like
you know, moving forward, right, this is lying when people
start investing. So it's a great flexible option they have,
right limit you can invest a small amount, can they
go up and down anytime saying you know, I feel
pretty strong through the months, I can invest more and
then bring it down during holiday season or their things.
(35:35):
But then eventually is it where they have to keep
it at the term of things or it just depends
on the mutual funds they invested in, or how does
that wealth return look like in their journey?
Speaker 3 (35:48):
So you think how long do you want should they keep?
Speaker 2 (35:51):
How long do they keep on? What does that typical
path look like for them?
Speaker 4 (35:55):
I think, see the it's Basically, the if you look
at this strategy of investing component interest companying interest in
component returns strategy, if you cross the one crew right
the mark, you're the time that it takes to accumulate
(36:16):
one crere. Let's say it takes about ten years. The
time taking me the next one crew will take only
maybe seven years. The time taking with the next third
one crew will be you know, maybe three years. So
because you're you know, the first one care is helping
you into your next one crore quite faster.
Speaker 3 (36:35):
So it's up to them.
Speaker 4 (36:38):
But what I suggest them is keep that as a
twenty year period.
Speaker 3 (36:43):
Don't dip into this wealth.
Speaker 4 (36:47):
And then try to use it up for you know,
regular expenses. That is something that you can use it
for your milestones. The milestones could be as we're saying,
children's education, or marriage or your retirement. You keep that
as the thing and don't try to start dipping into
this pool of money. So again, the reason I'm saying
(37:10):
twenty years is that the multiplication that happens after the
fifteen years.
Speaker 3 (37:14):
When you have one crore.
Speaker 4 (37:16):
I mean usually if you go with about one hundred
rupees or two hundred piece a day for fifteen years,
you'll reach one crow about one point fac cruise by
the time you're fifteen, and then you'll see the growth
from fifteen to twenty explode like anything because every year
you'll accumulate about twenty five acts from fifteen because once
you have started about one point f ruds. So that
(37:39):
is the thing that potential that they have to look
into because if you take money off from your pool,
there that growth you won't see again. So by the
time if you're investing about your two hundred rupees, by
the time it is twenty years, you could really make
about two point fact ruds.
Speaker 3 (37:57):
That potential come only a few.
Speaker 4 (38:00):
Don't take anything from your pool and keep that as
for your long term milestones.
Speaker 1 (38:04):
That's actually great, right because that gives gives a good
future vision for people to go invest in. And you
spoke about how quick things are to validate who the
person is coming in when they can invest you have
good mutual funds and so talking about just security right
like people are investing their harder money.
Speaker 2 (38:24):
How and what.
Speaker 1 (38:25):
God raans do you have in place or you're planning
to put in place around you?
Speaker 3 (38:30):
A good question.
Speaker 4 (38:30):
So see one thing is saying before the mandate that
we take is exclusively for buying mutual funds, exclusively for
the person whose bank name is on. So you cannot
be taking money from one bank account and buying it
on different bank a different person's name. So the mutual
(38:52):
fund will be allocated only on the person where the
money is coming from. So you can, for example, you
cannot have your wife buy you mutual funds in India.
I mean, I don't know how it is in the US,
but you the money has to go from your name,
that's when it will be located to you, So it
(39:15):
cannot be located or anybody else's name. So first thing,
so it means that the money is not going anywhere.
And the money the bank mandate that we take is
only for the purchase of mutual funds. It can be bought,
it can be taken for buying stocks or options or anything.
Speaker 3 (39:32):
Else, just for mutual funds. And again as saying, it's
just for on your name.
Speaker 4 (39:37):
So first thing, there's no risk of money in getting
diverted any other any other way. Right, it has to
be from the bank to the mutual fund company for
the purchase of mutual funds on behalf of the bank
holder's name. So that is very clear. So second think
is okay, the data itself that we have, we are
not We are just you know, initiating all these transactions,
(40:00):
so we don't have to uh you know, we we
we do keep records of all the mutual funds or
purchases that happen through our app. But again this data
is reflective of what is in the market. Uh will
Each AMC maintains their own records of customers data, so
(40:21):
it's not like there's a data loss or data corruption
doesn't happen on our end. It's basically obviously it's all
encrypted with you know users uh mpin and uh you
know they use wiety, but it's just our data is
just reflect to what is out there. So even if
they get out of the app for some reason they
(40:42):
don't want to use that, they can always go to
the AMC, UH the set management company.
Speaker 3 (40:48):
Look at they put their.
Speaker 4 (40:50):
PAN number, which is basically similar to your Social Security number,
and we will see all the mutual funds which are
purchased through not just wealth Up, but any other instruments
that any other platforms they have used to buy. Right,
So it's it's completely transparent in that way. And we
are just you know, keeping that data only so that
(41:10):
they can show they can show, we can show that
in the app. But we are not the owners of
the data, right, So even if the app doesn't exist,
that data is there with AMCs, right, it's uh, you know,
it has nothing to do with us. So we are
the just initiator of the transaction. So as we're saying,
(41:31):
I think money is completely secured. The transactions are completely
encrypted on outside, and the access to the app itself
is two factor authenticated. So somebody who just comes in
you need to have their EW phone number and an
MPIN and an o TP so it comes to their
(41:52):
email or phone number or phone. So it's secured that way.
And you know, nobody can initiate a transaction on somebody's
name unless they have you know, access to their mpin
and you know OTP. So that's completely secure. So again, uh,
you know, we use very strict encryptions. Uh so data
(42:17):
in your customer data in our database can be even
seen by our own edmin uh you know people, so
it'll be all encrypted with the mpin of the user.
So that level of encryption is there.
Speaker 5 (42:31):
I think if tass enough with wealth, it's time to
show welt Up to the world and maybe give us
a walkthrough.
Speaker 4 (42:41):
Yeah, let me do that. So give me one second.
We're gonna share my screen. Okay, So Epina wants you
see my screen. This is Wealth Up. H Yeah.
Speaker 3 (42:53):
So I'm just logging in with my mpin.
Speaker 4 (42:55):
I'm showing my portfolio and have been investing since last
four months or so because the app has been in
full functionality since four months. So I started with about
three hundred rupees per day, but now it's I'm putting
about six hundred. So I do want to invest in
Wealth Up. And we do have around third thousand customers
(43:19):
right now. Again they come from all walks of life,
from teachers to professors to guardeners and pujaris. So and
what you can see here it just shows you your portfolio.
That's my portfolio is seventy four persand and this is
the gain that I got about thirty four hundred rupees
in the last four months. And this number shows you
(43:43):
what is spending, which is today the transaction for six
hundred rupees has been initiated. This is the money that
was sent to AMC, which is the asset management companies
and they have not yet allocated me the funds. And
this is the total investment which is completely allocated funds
to me. And if you had to see my funds,
(44:04):
I can look at my funds here. Let me sort
by gains and so you can see what my portfolio
looks like with quite a diversified portfolio.
Speaker 3 (44:16):
With you know, different gains from different uh you know funds.
Speaker 4 (44:21):
Right, how many units are have in each of this
fun and how much value I have? How much did
I buy it for average price? I bought it for
what is the current value? And all this stuff. So
I'll just show you one very interesting thing which when
I go to my daily plan, right, this is where
I actually put in my six hundred piece. I can
(44:43):
change it anytime. I can make it two hundred. So
and I can say, okay, I don't want to do
every day of a week. I want to maybe do
you know, not do on Tuesdays and Thursdays? Could do
that too, right, I can just buy one click, I
can disable my investment. If I just click on this,
it will disable my investment and then no more money
(45:05):
will be taken from me going forward. Right, this is
one click. So if the user says okay, I don't
want to invest for the next one week. He can
just come or she can come and I click on
this and disable it and then they can come back
and enable when they want. Right. So, so, as I
was saying, you can change your daily investment any time
(45:25):
you want, and you can also shift a monthly a
plan as well. So I can say if I want
to invest fifteen hundred every first of the month, or
I can say in additionally, I can do every eighteenth
of the month, or you can put any number like
you can say I want to do for every twenty
sixth of the month. So I can pick and date
and amount that I want to invest in each of
(45:47):
those days. Right, So I'll we call it monthly, but
it actually is, you know, more frequently than just monthly. Right,
So you could do all that. So now if I
come to my strategies, right I was saying before, Right now,
I'm self managed. I'm actually investing in three funds. I
have Access Bank Midcalf Fund about fifty percent, histcy balance
(46:11):
about twenty percent, and I have one MorePhone which is
Opportunity Fund, which is thirty percent. So even though I'm
putting six centrad rupees, my algorithm will decide how the
six central repeats to be split across these funds. Obviously,
it won't buy all three of them on a given day,
but it might buy two of them on a given day.
Maybe tomorrow will do this something else. But what it
(46:34):
does eventually is that it catches off with these percentages. Right,
it knows that this is my intention fifty twenty thirty,
and it ensures that eventually it catches off with that.
So every date's make a decision how much money it
has to put into each So imagine if you had
to do that manually, and you have to do if
(46:54):
this is how you want to distribute your small amounts
into these kind of percentages across this funds. It's not
an easy exercise, right. And the other thing is your
automated automanaged, which is you know you can have high
risk funds. I can say fifty percent, so this is
all defaults, so by default everybody is set to medium risk.
(47:19):
So twenty five percent high funds and fifty percent medium
funds and twenty five percent here and what are those funds?
If you come here, they can see the high risk
funds are these? The medium risk funds are these? The
low risk funds or this, right, this is the fund list.
Every day engine will look at what is the best
fund that is out in the market and based on
(47:41):
where they you know, what is their capacity. For example,
if somebody puts one hundred dupees, then it picks this
fund or one of the other funds and then invest
in there.
Speaker 3 (47:51):
Right, So minimum invest.
Speaker 4 (47:53):
Purchases what it looks at and also looks at, you know,
what is the best fund for that day that it
has to peak in the high risk right, So that
does that your determination on a daily basis.
Speaker 3 (48:06):
So okay, let me go back here to my strategy.
Speaker 4 (48:10):
So one more interesting thing that we have done is
you can build your own custom strategy. For example, I
could say that I want to, you know, define my
custom risk profile as I want to put sixty five
percent in this, or maybe sixty percent in this and
maybe twenty percent in this and twenty percent in this. Right,
(48:33):
I could define my own You don't have to go
with the presets. So the engine will ensure that these
percentages are you know, matched up eventually when it's investing
every days, make sures that, you know, if we are
closer to these percentages right when you're in when it's
putting the money in. So that's called automanaged as well. Yeah, yeah,
(48:56):
please good.
Speaker 5 (48:58):
No, I mean yes, so are super theleer. I don't
have any questions of super impressive, very self intuitive and
easy to manage. So yeah, I like it so far.
Speaker 4 (49:11):
Thank you. So I'll just see you one more thing.
If you just look at my portfolio as it's growing.
I mean May is made June and July. I think
I was investing about three hundred rupees and after that
I started six hundred rupees and you can see how
it is growing and really redeeming. It's very simple, you can.
(49:31):
I mean, we don't encourage people to readeem because that's
not the best strategy of investing here. But if they
want to readeem, they can always come here redeem, click
on the redeem and then you know, it shows you
how many units you have, how many how much value
you have. You can reading by units of the value.
And there is there are two things that we are
now you're building up. One is which will come in
(49:55):
the next one week or two is redeeming a bulk
on for exams. I have seventy four thousand and I
want to readem ten thousand from there, right, So the
system will tell me what is the best way it
readium redemption has to happen across the funds. So it
will come up and say, based on your profile, based
(50:16):
on funds that are in your portfolio, based on how
the funds are performing, it's going to say, reading three
thousand from this, one, two thousand from here, five thousand
from here. It's going to give you a strategy and
you can just act upon it.
Speaker 6 (50:30):
Right.
Speaker 4 (50:31):
So redeeming also is completely automated in a way that
it comes with the best recommendation for you can always
change it if you want. The other thing is rebalancing.
Rebalancing is now that you have if you look at
my portfolio here, if I go through gaining loss and
I'll sort it by loss, right, you see that Nippon
(50:52):
India Multi. This is actually I have about three hundred
piece invested and it's actually down and compared to if
I sorted here, my best performing fund is eight point
eight percent. It's giving me in the last four months
that support if we had just seed two a yearly
basis about twenty five percent return on it. So I
(51:16):
think basically the rebalancing is where customer can initiate or
the system will initiate saying that it's time to rebalance.
It's going to prompt the user. You know, why don't
you take money from your bad performing and put into
good performing funds. So that rebalancing is a huge thing.
I mean if you look at you know, customers who
(51:36):
don't know how to do that and customers who are
not you know, savvy enough to understand the nuances of
emmutual fund, how it is you know structured, and what
the portfolio of mutual fund is and all this stuff,
you know, leading them promptly, you know, prompting them to change,
you know, rebalancing it in a very automated fashion is
(51:59):
a very iportant thing because the whole idea about wealth
up is not just automating stuff, but also ensuring that
they get the maximum writtens. I mean, you want to
obviously beat the index funds by you know, by miles, right,
So if index fund is giving like fifteen person, you
want to you know, have them maybe about five percent
(52:21):
extra on that. So you know that the whole idea
is to you know, come up with these kind of
algorithms which you know, pick the right funds. Help them
reading stuff in the right way, help them rebalance their
portfolio right way. So all the thing is getting built.
I mean, think of this way. You are getting a
(52:41):
very expert investment advisor for free here in addition to
being all automated for you, right, just with one hundred
piece a day. Right, you know that is something that's unbeatable.
Speaker 3 (52:53):
I mean, if you look at it.
Speaker 5 (52:56):
Very cool, Ram, very nicely done, and super easy for
anyone to onboard. And you know, as you were saying,
I mean I was thinking about a presentation I did
recently as well. I mean, you know, India's digital revolution
helps with this as well, right, because I mean in
the last ten to fifteen years, I mean, you know,
everybody has a cell phone or two and this is
(53:19):
in their fingertips right now. They don't have to go
to a bank, they don't have to sit down with somebody.
I mean, they can take the help of somebody, even
if it is somebody on the older side not digitally savvy.
They can just take the help of a family member
to still get this done super easily. Right, So that
adds to it as well. So Ram, I mean, what
(53:42):
was the inspiration for doing this given I mean, of
course you have the financial background and so did it.
Where did you get the spark to say, hey, I
mean you know there's a good, good place to invest
time and money.
Speaker 3 (53:55):
I think, I mean there is a two answers to this.
Speaker 4 (54:00):
One is is it I think the way I believe
in God and I think there's a divinely inspiration that
came to me. That's a long story. I won't go there.
But there was that spark that really spark came from
a divinely message, which is a different time for that.
Speaker 3 (54:19):
But I think I looked at it as.
Speaker 4 (54:22):
A path where you see that there is there's so
much that people can benefit from an app like this. Uh,
it has a social cost to you, right there is
there is a reason why you see so much uh
your message that's coming from Indian government itself in making
(54:44):
people aware of benefits of financial investment and encouraging.
Speaker 3 (54:49):
Them to invest.
Speaker 4 (54:50):
And there is, uh, there is a reason for that.
They want people to be, you know, part of this
Indian's growth story. I think, uh, so you're the best
way to get that is to make sure that people
can you know, simplify the whole process of investing. Even
for somebody who's not educated, like my gardener, who doesn't
(55:11):
he know what stocks mean? So how do you bring
even from somebody from there to all the way to
like a professor in a university. It is a customer
of mind. So people I mean they don't have time.
I mean if a professor might be able to understand everything,
but he or she doesn't have time to understand and
(55:32):
sit down and sput the time to see what is
the best way to invest and what are the best
mutual funds of stocks to invest in? And it's a game,
right and how do you play it rightly? Is you
know they might not be aware of these things. So
how do you bring in financial inclusion of all these
people into this right in a simple, uh, you know,
automated way so that everybody benefits. There is a huge
(55:55):
social cost to this if you look a cost to this,
if you look at.
Speaker 5 (55:59):
Itto that angle, yeah perfect, yeah, yeah. So around before
we wrap up, we want to ask you something that
we ask all our founders and guests. I mean, what
can the community do for you? I mean, are you
looking for investors or or right now are you just
looking for people to download it, use it, give feedback
to make it better.
Speaker 6 (56:18):
I mean, what do you what do you want from
the community.
Speaker 4 (56:20):
Yeah, I think mainly I want people to understand the
app and be users of it in download it and
use it. And again investment, We're not looking for investors
at this point. I mean, this is something that we
built in the last two years with our own money. Again,
I was saying, this is we have a service company,
(56:41):
so obviously you have other means of supporting this app financially.
So it's all built organically within the organization.
Speaker 3 (56:50):
And so at this point we're not looking for investors.
Speaker 4 (56:52):
But obviously I'm open to somebody who's not just brings money,
but also brings in a huge wealth of uh, you know,
marketing something like this, uh for Indian market, who understands
how to take an app like this to the next level.
(57:13):
So if somebody comes to that kind of uh vast
knowledge and has in roads into insights into you know,
taking us to the next level, will be definitely I
would like to associate with somebody like that. Yeah, not
just for the investing money, but I was saying, like
some partner who will be you know, who has that
kind of uha.
Speaker 5 (57:34):
Take it to the next level. Yeah, exactly, Okay, thanks Ron.
Speaker 1 (57:38):
Yeah, now this is this is a great aproground, like
you mentioned right, getting that financial investment capability. So the
masses is a worthy cause and I love like how
you spark and shining when you mentioned that that was
the drive behind it.
Speaker 2 (57:52):
So well, well, we wish you good luck. This was great.
Speaker 1 (57:57):
I think about wealth up and we wish you all
the best of up with your future endeavors. And we'll
wait to see where this goes and and track the progress.
Speaker 2 (58:06):
So thank you for taking the time and talking to us.
Speaker 4 (58:08):
Today, you guys, thank you, thank you for giving me
this opportunity again, be appreciated lot. Thanks all the best,
Thank you guys. By then,
This is the startup Still Say podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:02):
Thank you for tuning in. You as a favor like
subscribe on YouTube or LinkedIn, and be sure to give
us your feedback. Hope you enjoyed this episode him. Welcome
everyone for another episode of Start with Delsey.
Speaker 1 (00:14):
I'm with Gore your co host alongside Anthony Percash, and
today we welcome Roun here, who's the founder for Welthop
and the CEO of sure Ram. Why don't you kick
us off with an introduction and background about yourself.
Speaker 3 (00:28):
Hi, Anthony and Haride.
Speaker 4 (00:29):
First of all, thank you for taking time in inviting
me to your podcast.
Speaker 3 (00:34):
So yeah, my name is rom Thluri.
Speaker 4 (00:36):
I'm the CEO of She's Infoteke and I'll basically be
talking about welt up and what that is as a
by product of So before that my background IM a
graduate of I Madras and right after that I went
to the US and I did my masters and I
worked in Wall Street for about fifteen years to mainly
(00:57):
in the financial industry. Worked in the Goal in Goldman's
Acts for about ten years as a vice president on
the technology side, and it so happened that I was
more involved in the financial aspects of Goldman.
Speaker 3 (01:11):
I mean technology.
Speaker 4 (01:12):
So I was part of a surveillance team, which has
to do with you know, surveilling a lot of the
trades that happened and the trades coming from different types
of instruments and products. So I kind of forgot a
very in depth knowledge of what, you know, what these
instruments are, what are the different products out there in
the financial market. So that led me to you know
(01:34):
a lot of domain knowledge, and around I would say
two thousand and nine, I migrated back to India. So
since then I have started this company, Stysyfotech, and it's
already already been about fifteen years now and you know,
part of that journey we have done, you know, service
various clients, mainly in the financial domain. And that's how
(01:58):
I happened to know of Anthony as well. So apart
from that, I mean because of my background and domain
knowledge in financial domain, so I ended up doing always
trying to come up with some product innovative products in
the financial domain, and Wealth Up is one of them,
and I'll be talking more about what that is.
Speaker 5 (02:19):
I must say, rum after fifteen years in Wall Street,
you still have all your hair intacts are pretty commandable.
So what let's maybe touch upon Wall Street experience and
what you did after that rum. I mean, why the
(02:39):
I mean, obviously Wall Street is super exciting or at
the same time very stressful, as a lot of people say,
what made you actually roll up your sleeves and say, Okay,
I mean I've done enough in the US, Let's move
back to India and start.
Speaker 6 (02:55):
Your own gig. Why the entrepreneurial journey.
Speaker 3 (02:58):
Yeah, that's a good question. So I think it has
two main reasons.
Speaker 4 (03:02):
One is my family reason, which is my dad was
kind of going through some kind of Parkinson's kind of issues.
Speaker 3 (03:11):
At that time.
Speaker 4 (03:11):
And you know, we have two brothers. My elder brother
also lives in the US, so it's I'm the younger one.
So it was easier for me to come back to
India and take care of my family.
Speaker 3 (03:23):
So that was one main reason.
Speaker 4 (03:24):
And as the driver, because my mom was alone and
it's very tough to take care of somebody who's going through,
you know, mental issues. So that is one I think
I thought when I come back, I didn't want to
work for some somebody again, I mean, I have gone
through a lot of that in the Wall State, so
I wanted to start something on my own, and so
(03:44):
that's why I thought, Okay, why not you know, being
a technologist, in the first thing you do is start
a technology firm.
Speaker 3 (03:52):
So it's a development center in India.
Speaker 4 (03:56):
So you know, we do service a lot of clients
and you S and UK as well.
Speaker 3 (04:01):
So that's how it started.
Speaker 5 (04:03):
And all of your India operations is based out.
Speaker 6 (04:06):
Of Hyderabad right now. I mean, or do you have
multiple anyone else?
Speaker 4 (04:09):
No? No, most of the development happens in Okay, and
I have I do have consultants who work all over India,
so but mainly India based.
Speaker 5 (04:19):
Yeah, okay, got it. So I mean we're here to
obviously double click on welt up. Wealth up is a
brand new offering coming out of your wealth of experience
in the financial industry. And why don't we speak about
wealth up. I mean your new initiative, which you've probably
(04:41):
unwrapped very slowly, right, I mean, I think there are
a few pilot users on it. But why didn't you
tell the audience about what wealth up is and what
do you intend people to use it for and how
can they benefit out of it?
Speaker 6 (04:56):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (04:57):
Definitely.
Speaker 4 (04:57):
So wealth up is a product of Synfotech and this
is something we have been working on since last two years.
It's an app Basically the main manthra if wealth is
to grow your wealth and small investment today. So I
think that says a lot, but I think mainly the
idea is to help anybody like a common person to
(05:21):
be able to invest in Indian market. And if you
look at the you know, what's happening in India for
the last past twenty years, right, is a tremendous growth
in India, especially when you look at the GDP itself
and has grown from two point three trillion dollars to
three point five trillion dollars in the last fifteen years.
And that's actually translated into you know financial market as well.
(05:46):
If you look at THEFTY to fifteen index, which is
similar to what you have in Dow Jones in US, right,
you look at it, that index grew from twenty five
hundred in two thousand and eight time period to twenty
five thousand now such about eight and in person you
know height, and you know there's a lot of people
made money on it and a lot of people lost
(06:07):
also in you know, doing the wrong type of investment.
But the thing is that this growth is just not
reflect to of the index itself. But you see that
if you have come to Indias fifteen years back and
you saw India now let's say, huge difference in terms
of infrastructure, in terms of healthcare, in terms of you know, airports,
(06:28):
roads and a lot of stuff that's that's different from
what you have seen twenty years back in India. And
that's a reflect of what is happening in India in
terms of investment that's getting in, how the industries are growing,
and that the GDP also reflects that point. Right. So,
but if you look at that opportunity within that fifteen
twenty years of opportunity, that you don't see too many
(06:49):
Indians actually investing into Indian market. I mean, if you
just statistically speaking, it's only five percent of Indians actually
have invested in the past fifteen years. And then I
a person or left out in a way because they
don't know how to invest, what invest in, when to
invest in, and even things like why which they should invest.
I mean, most of the time, you know, people put
(07:12):
into FD switch a fixed deposits in banks and they're
happy with five maybe six percent returns on them. But
they think that you know, Again, even people who are
aware of this financial you know, opportunities, they feel that
it's too risky or they might not be even knowledgeable
to do that. I mean, there are people who have
(07:32):
good disposable income and they do get advice from financial
advisors and they do invest. But again that's a very
small percentage, right, So if that opportunity was there, I mean,
just to give you in numbers, right, if somebody had
invested let's say one hundred apiece per day since past
(07:53):
fifteen years, every day, right forgetting about market ups and downs,
you know, ignoring all those things, they would have ended
up with about crew rupee in their bank. Right, that's
the develop that they could have accumulated. It's a simple thing.
I mean, a strategy that's well you know age old strategy,
well proven, low risk strategy, which is you know, just
(08:15):
to put one hundred dollars rupees a month, sorry, per
day and your wealthill grow because you know, if financial
markets are growing at that speed, you would accumulate that much.
That that's an opportunity that was there fifteen years, in
the past fifteen years, and people didn't take advantage. But
if you look at what is happening in the next
twenty years, right that the projections are right now, India
(08:38):
is fifth largest economy and it's projected to be going
to third largest economy maybe by twenty fifty. So that
actually means that the GDP will grow from three point
five trillion to about twenty five trillion. So now look
at the what is the impact on financial markets because
(09:00):
of that? I mean it will be tremendous impact compared
to you know, forget about what happened in the last
fifteen years, right, I mean this growth that you'll see
in the next twenty years will be even larger. And
again you see who's going to benefit from there or
all the business people people who are investing from outside
people have good disposable income and good advice advisors advising
(09:22):
on you know, how to invest. But again the ninety
fair person will be left out. So if somebody who's
working let's say about fifty thousand one lap per month
salary right now around that, which is majority of Indians do,
so they'll be the way they are. I mean, they
won't see too much growth in their financial situation except
that maybe there'll be more jobs and they will be
(09:46):
you know, more paque because just a to inflation. They
will see that, they'll be racist in prey, they pay scale,
but the savings and the wealth accumulation won't happen. It
will be like somebody who has been even if will
take somebody who has been earning let's say teacher, right,
thirty thousand rupees, I'm pretty sure that they won't have
accumulated a crow rupee in the last fifteen years, although
(10:09):
they had an opportunity to do that, right, So looking
at what is the potential that we are looking at
for the next twenty years, Again, that opportunity needs to
be tapped in a certain way, in some way, and
welcome actually helps you do that.
Speaker 3 (10:23):
So now you understand the opportunity.
Speaker 4 (10:27):
So now if you look at is what are the
ways that we can tap into that hardness that opportunity
is obviously somebody who's very good at investing in stocks
and stocks and options and any other instruments. I mean,
you need to be an expert, you need to be
really good at it, you need to be on top
of it every day. So it's pretty risky as well, right,
(10:48):
I mean coming from a financial domain, again, my government
experience tells me what I've seen throughout my thirty years
in financial industry that people really who makes it are
pretty good, but again they go through a lot of
stress and a lot of people actually end up losing
as well.
Speaker 3 (11:08):
In playing all these games.
Speaker 4 (11:09):
Right, it's but I mean apart from all the financial
in what they ore to say, institutions, right, they make
good money. But I think general common man, I mean,
who's into stocks and options? Usually it's very tough. I mean,
if you ask somebody have they made about fifteen or
one crore in the last fifteen years by investing in stocks,
(11:29):
you won't find too many people, right, because that's not
the right way for a majority of us. So now
what is the other option you have? I mean the
other option is again you have to go to your
financial advisor and find out what is the best way
to invest. But again your financial advisors don't advise people
who have less disposably become right, unless you have good
amount of money, they don't cater to them. So the
(11:52):
third option is obviously other way of investing things like
in India we call it SIP systematic investment land, which
is to invest about maybe ten fifteen thousand, depending on
what your salaries or or basically is you can invest that,
but then that SIP is done on.
Speaker 3 (12:12):
A monthly basis.
Speaker 4 (12:14):
It expects that you have that money in the first
week of the month, on in a particular day of
a month, and you expect that that investment will happen
in the right right timing because market could be up
and down, it doesn't matter. So it has to happen
on the first of month of a month. It has
to happen. It doesn't matter which you know, whether the
market is upper down. So there's a risk involved in
(12:36):
putting a bulk of money on one time once a month.
So that's something that you know it's not the right
or the best way to invest. Right. So now what
wealthub does is it has this strategy called clear Clear
is nothing but consistency stands is consistent L stands for
lu entry E stands or efficient A stands or automated
(12:59):
completely automated, and our stands were risk egisted. So I'll
explain what this means as a strategy, and then I'll
explain what Wealth does to implement this strategy. Right, So
consistent means the again I was saying the month rise
invest daily, right invest small amounts daily and consistently. Right,
So every day you take under rupiece of two hun
(13:22):
piece or three d piece whatever you can afford to
and put that amount and be consistent in doing that. Right.
So then low entry, as I was saying, like, you
don't need to have a huge amount of money to
get into market and benefit from growing your wealth because
you have the opportunity now, So you don't need to
have ten thousand rupees, right, you can maybe have two
(13:43):
hundred rupees on a day. I mean that sequel into
maybe like having a breakfast in India. I mean you
can get chai coffee and some small snack for two
hundred rupees now, I mean that's what people use. I
mean spend on that. So that much money you can
spend on your savings as well. So we have the
month right here is to think of your savings as
(14:05):
an expense as well, right, which is a small amount
on a daily basis. So that's a rule entry, So
you don't have to have too much money to be
getting too investing and growing your wealth. Right.
Speaker 3 (14:16):
And the next thing is efficiency.
Speaker 4 (14:18):
So because you are putting on a daily basis, it
doesn't matter whether it stocks has gone up or down.
Speaker 3 (14:26):
For the day market is done.
Speaker 4 (14:29):
If you look at last week, I mean, you know,
the whole world has gone through a cycle of you know, dip,
but it doesn't matter. You're investing and buying into the
day and if the market has gone up, okay, it
doesn't matter because you're investing in small and you're growing
your money by putting some more money. So your efficiency
in that investing is you know, pretty much in there
(14:51):
if you're doing.
Speaker 3 (14:52):
A daily investment.
Speaker 4 (14:54):
And automation, I mean, what we have done with Wealth
Up is that once you're onboarded doesn't have to do anything. Uh,
it's completely automated. There's a concept of emandate in India.
I think it's pretty much there for you guys as well.
I guess in the US. Emmanded basically lets the banks
(15:14):
take a mandate from the customer letting vendors, you know,
take pay for example, Google pay might get an invoice,
it gets automatically get paid things like that's right. So similarly,
you can have an e mandate for investment as well.
So that is the automation. And then and then I'll
talk more about automation as well. And the secret that
(15:35):
the last one hour stands for risk adjusted, so it's
adjusted to the customer risk profile based on how much
they risk they can take and whether they're doing high
risk or medium risk alories. The app does adjust itself
to what their risk levels are and then invest in
the right way. So that is a whole ideas. That's
(15:56):
a clear strategy. We call it right and I can
any questions you have if you have any, or I
can just move into how wealth up actually implements this
clear star.
Speaker 2 (16:06):
I'm curious to hear.
Speaker 5 (16:09):
I do have a question though, so so h I mean,
first of all, just to summarize Wealth up for everyone, right,
I mean, Wealth up is a brand new app where
you can take small amounts of money, Like you said,
it could be one hundred whatever you can afford. It
could be as small as one hundred a piece per
(16:30):
day invest through the app consistently in the Indian market.
And that could be that that part is essentially managed
by wealth up to say you know whether it's going
to be in mutual funds or you know stocks, I
mean you have a default way by which you can
(16:51):
divide that money or invest that money rather, or they
can choose to do that. I'm assuming like much like
four oh, one k that sort of thing. And your approach,
with the clear framework and methodology is that, I mean, okay,
consistently invest.
Speaker 6 (17:07):
Over a long period of time.
Speaker 5 (17:11):
The GDP is growing, the spending power is growing, India
as a country is growing.
Speaker 6 (17:16):
So there's a.
Speaker 5 (17:17):
Really good chance that, I mean, all this money that
you're investing is going to be directly proportional to that
growth as well. And ten years down the line, fifteen
years down the line, you're going to be sitting on
a good chunk of money which you've not really planned for.
Right now, you don't have to make big, risky bets.
Hence the approach of you know, small tiny droplets, if
(17:43):
you will, which will make that big pond or lake
or in this case ocean as you're selling it. Right, So,
did I summarize.
Speaker 6 (17:52):
That right on?
Speaker 3 (17:54):
Yeah, that is true, I think.
Speaker 2 (17:55):
So.
Speaker 4 (17:56):
The idea here is that to invest small and you know,
people who are just started to work, maybe somebody who's
in twenty five years old. Within twenty years, you know,
they might have about two crows or three crows in
their hand if you know, this to this kind of strategy,
strategic investment, and that's something that with small amounts. You
(18:18):
are not going to be in that position if you
didn't do that, right, so, or you know that could
be usedful when they have their kids. You know, in India,
marriage and education or two things that people. I think
that's true for the rest of the world as well.
But I think you know, you in India, marriage and
education or the most expense uh, you know, fact items
(18:41):
in the financial planning. So when people are about forty
years or forty five, you need to have that much
money or saved up. So if somebody is starting around
twenty five, just got married and this is the right
time to do that, I mean keep that as a
long term you know, savings plan or strategy. It doesn't
(19:02):
have to be the only strategy, but it could be
that this is one of the strategies of best low
risk strategy that you can do. Uh. And somebody who's
in forty I mean they want to retire by the
time they are sixty with about two three cloths in
their hand. And again this is a strategy, right. If not,
they would not have that kind of money in there
when they retire. Right. So again, this is not to
(19:23):
buy a car or buy a house, right, you know,
that's not what we're looking at. So this is the strategy. Obviously,
if you want to invest more maybe a thousand rupieces
a day, and then it's a different thing. I mean
you could actually gain more I mean within shorter time.
But you know, somebody who wants to you know, can
dispose off only like a few hundreds a day. And
(19:45):
this is strategy, which is a long term strategy. Right.
Speaker 3 (19:49):
So again, I think.
Speaker 4 (19:51):
India is even if you don't do that in any
in some format, that if you're not investing in India,
then you will be left out. I mean India will row,
but you're not going to be part of it. Right.
So that's a very strong message because you know you
will be where you are, but you'll see that India
has grown. I mean, you know that's that's the financial
inclusion is very important and this is one one way
(20:15):
to do that. Even if you look at what is
happening here in India is that the government itself is
encouraging people to invest, especially in mutual funds and you
see ads about it all the time. So and they're
doing it because they want people to be you know,
involved in this and included in this financial growth. So
you know what Wealth up does is to enable that,
(20:38):
right in a very smart and automated way. So I'll
just move on to how Wealth up implements this strategy then, so.
Speaker 3 (20:50):
Clear clear strategy.
Speaker 4 (20:51):
So first thing is when you're onboarded into wealth up,
you you there's a KYC process which basically you know,
there are a lot of reglationis in India now for
investing which are pretty good. I mean they it has streamlined.
There a lot of technologies platforms which have come up
which enable you know a lot of electronic investment and
(21:12):
you know kyic checks and everything. So in wealth Up,
within fifteen twenty minutes, somebody could be onboarded, the KC
could be validated in fifteen minutes and they'll be an
investor in India in fifteen minutes, right, So that is
a huge thing. I mean, this kind of technology integration
is not there may be two three years back now
it is. So what Wealth up does is to use
(21:34):
that integrations. I mean their government agencies which help us
do that, and there are other private platforms which are
integrated to do that. So within fifteen twenty minutes you're
onboarded and your KYS is done, You're ready to invest
and you don't have to as a customer.
Speaker 3 (21:51):
You don't have to do anything else in Wealth up.
Speaker 4 (21:53):
Wealth Up basically when you're onboarding, it asks you how
much do you on investor on a daily basis. On
a weekly basis, you can pick you know your number
of days days that you want to invest or. It
could be monthly, three or four times in a month,
some particular days.
Speaker 3 (22:08):
You know you could do all that right there, I'll
show you in a demo.
Speaker 4 (22:11):
So once you have configured that, then there's two options.
One is that completely automanaged, which basically means that wealth
up has tied up with investment advisors who advise Wealth
Up on what are the best mutual funds on a
given period, and basically the daily amount is then will
(22:34):
be distributed into those funds based on the customer risk
profile and you divide for all the customers. All customers
set to medium risk profile, but they can change it,
and based on the risk profile, the funds get bought.
And the good thing about Wealth up in terms of
security is that the mandates that we take the e
(22:55):
mandate to take the payment is a pay mandate which
the bad gives only for the purchase of mutual funds
on behalf of the customer whose bank the mutual funds
are bought on behalf the customer's name, which matches the
bank account name. So what it means is the mandate
cannot be used for anything else, even to buy stocks.
(23:17):
I mean Wealth Up is not to buy stocks, only
mutual funds. It invests only mutual funds. So the money
goes directly from the bank to the mutual fund companies
they call asset management companies, which are like I S,
hdfcs and all those guys who actually sell the mutual funds.
The money goes directly from the bank to the mutual
(23:38):
fund companies to buy a particular mutual fund. So what
wealthup is doing is just initiating the transaction. They're saying,
you know, this customer needs to buy two hundred rupees
worth of mutual funds of this particular mutual fund. So
and this is the AMC, which is the mutual fund company,
send the money. So the money gives. It's transferred directly.
(24:01):
There's no middleman, there's no wallet here. You know, money
is not kept anywhere for later purchases. It's just money
gets directly transferred immediately to the mutual fund company. Obviously,
the mutual mutual fund company might take about one to
two days to fulfill the order and get the notification
that it has done it. Even mutual fund companies actually
(24:24):
directly email the customer once the purchase has been done.
So the complete transparency and it's very straightforward. And as
we were saying, like bup is just an integrator or
an engine which basically enables this whole process. It automation,
but it doesn't involved in selling mutual funds or involved
in any way handling your the customer money. Right, so
(24:47):
that's the security feature right here. So now you know,
as we're saying, like, once the onboarding is done automatically,
every day, you know, whatever the customer has enabled as
as they daily investment, that investment gets into various mutual
funds based on the risk profile on a daily basis. Right,
So that is what the auto managed. And if the
(25:09):
customer chooses to say, okay, I know what I have
to invest in which mutual funds and they can choose
to do that too. And one of the great uh,
you know what is this algorithm that we have come
up with which will be very unique and we want
to patent it as well. We are going through the
process for that is that taking a small amount like
one hundred rupees and two hundred piece and be able
(25:30):
to distribute across various funds risk managed risk adjested funds
is the challenge. Right. For example, if I give you
ten lacks and I say put it in, put it
fifty percent in high risk, thirty percent in medium risk,
in twenty percent reload is it's very easy. You'll put
you file ax in here, relax in your full lax
in here.
Speaker 5 (25:50):
Right.
Speaker 4 (25:50):
But if I'm taking small amounts on a daily basis
and still be able to make sure that your risk
is adjusted, profile is redgisted according to your investment, that
very challenging. So that's so that there's an algorithm that
we came up with which basically ensures that by end
of maybe a certain time that you're you know, on
(26:11):
a daily basis. The algorithm we look at to see
what is the best fund to invest in and also
how to invest making sure that your your risk profile
is intact.
Speaker 2 (26:23):
Right.
Speaker 4 (26:23):
So, although you're doing a small invest the same thing
with your self managed which is basically you pick your
own mutual funds. You say that in first fund one
you want to invest thirty person fund to fifty percent,
fund three twenty percent and again the engine will make
sure that the distribution of your funds on a daily basis,
you know, or adhering to that percentages. Although you're doing
(26:45):
a really small investment. And the good thing what happened
in India in the last I would say two years,
is that even you can buy a mutual fund for
a good one hundred rupees right the fund value might
be the price of the fund might be about fifty rupees,
so you get two units. Right, So before that they
were like, you know, your minimum mement fus five thousand rupees.
(27:07):
So obviously he said, you know, you can do much
with it with one hundred upees. So now there are
a lot of funds which are even for one hundred rupees.
There are funds which are two hundred dupeces, the funds
which are five hundred thousands. So you based on how
much you are investing your daily investment is the engine
will determine which is the fund that it has to invest. Right,
(27:28):
so it's completely automated, so your hands free, imaine, you
don't have to go to the app every day. You
get WhatsApp notifications, you get emails and what's happening. You
get emails on your daily report and activity, what is
happening And obviously you get emails from the AMC companies
as well on what purchases have been done on behalf
of you. So all this is automated. So even for
(27:49):
a sophisticated customers, they can pick their own funds and
all this stuff. Right, any questions, I mean I will
talk more, but let me open up questions now I
want to.
Speaker 1 (27:58):
Ask from so like I think this is you're going
after the safety too, right with the mutual funds.
Speaker 2 (28:04):
Right, it's all safe, It's all on the safe societ.
It's not a high risk recur to the stocks.
Speaker 1 (28:09):
Growing up in India, I know savings was definitely rooted
in investing was never so I would think the biggest
hurdle is even educating people about like what investment in
wealth building means, not just saving.
Speaker 2 (28:24):
So how are you trying to overcome that?
Speaker 5 (28:26):
Right?
Speaker 1 (28:26):
So I get that this is the aggregator, but even
to bring people to that platform where they can go
and do this, and how does that value?
Speaker 2 (28:32):
So how's that education being?
Speaker 4 (28:34):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (28:35):
So yeah, that's a good question.
Speaker 4 (28:37):
So I think I was saying before, I think a
lot of people don't know why they have to invest.
So once they cross why, there is what and how
and when and things like that. But why is the question.
But I think it's all about educating. As I was saying,
I think I'll tell you one example. My gardener who
makes about forty thousand. I mean he makes forty thousand
(28:57):
believing he works in your ten twenty houses and he
makes money. He works very hard, and I was just
talking to him a few days back and I told him,
I mean, you work so much. I mean, how much
have you accumulated in terms of your wealth? And he
has not much balance, right, and he keeps asking me
to borrow some money from me. So I was telling him, okay,
(29:18):
if you invest one hundred rupees a day in twenties,
he's about forty years old now and in twenty years
you will have about a crew repiece. That interesting proposition
to you. So he was very excited. And I think
it's about explaining them opportunity. And believe me, he was
here in my office yesterday and to get onboarded. So
(29:38):
I think the thing is that they have to understand
the concept of compounding interest, componing returns, and that's something
that has to be educated at a for somebody like
who's not He doesn't know anything about stocks, he doesn't
know anything about financial markets, nothing. But the moment I
explained to him, it just took me fight minutes to
(30:00):
say what his wealth could be. Right, Otherwise, there's no
way that he'll have a crow rupine in his hand
when he's sixty.
Speaker 3 (30:08):
There's no way.
Speaker 4 (30:10):
Right. So obviously he has some lands and all this
stuff in his village, but that's different, right, hard cash.
Having one crore in your hand when you're sixty is
a big deal in India. So that's with one hundred
upiece a day. He is like, okay, I eate one
hundred red pieces a day. I spent two hundred dupeaces.
It's something, I mean, we don't know how it goes off, right,
(30:31):
It gets spent every day. So for me to save
one hundred pieces a day is not a big deal.
And if you're saying that it's going to give me
a crul in twenty years from now, he was on board.
So that's the thing. I think that's a message that
has to be you know, given and it has to
be educated in that way. But I think people have
(30:53):
to understand the opportunity first and the strategies or you know,
whether they go with Wealth Up or any other thing.
But people investing into financial markets in India is the
right thing to do as of now, and and doing
it in safe way and doing using Wealth Up is
one of the I would say a better alternative that
(31:13):
we have in India right now. So I think it's yeah,
I think basically it's all keeping people. I think. I'll
tell you I was talking to a teachers group and
teachers make about forty thousand or fifty thousand per month,
and it was it didn't take me much time to convince,
(31:34):
you know, a group of teachers because they're quite well educated.
They understand that, you know, they are they need to invest,
but they don't know how to invest right. So there
are segments of uh, you know, target target customers who
don't know why, and there are segments whould know why
but they don't know how. So I need to, you know,
(31:54):
dig in and you come up with different messages for
different sectors of these customers. And that's the challenge. But
I think that's what we have to that's what we
are trying to, you know, put our old marketing strategy
around that.
Speaker 5 (32:06):
If I'm not wrong, I mean even for the blue
collar crowd, right, I mean.
Speaker 6 (32:13):
You know, your gardener or.
Speaker 5 (32:15):
Anyone in that sort of occupation. I mean there used
to be this concept of maybe still is the whole
concept of chip funds and all that in India, right yeah,
I mean a lot of them end up being bad stories,
sad stories, right than the good stories. I mean, in
a way, you're cutting the middleman out, giving them the
power to do what you want. I mean, in this
(32:38):
particular case, you know you have the strategy, it is
low risk as well, and then it's a consistent investment.
So maybe it's you're drawing parallels to that particular model,
but I mean in a way they are fully in
control and not trusting a middle man who might run
away with that money.
Speaker 4 (32:58):
Right yeah. Cheat funds is something, as you rightly indicate it. Uh,
it's a big concept in India and a lot of
blue collar people do that. I think it's as you indicated,
it's they.
Speaker 3 (33:11):
Are risk involved.
Speaker 4 (33:13):
But the intention of putting something into chat fund is
also is different. It's for short term, uh, as you
know gain of it's not wealth. Actually, it's basically access
to a chunk of money for short term usage. For example,
if somebody wants to say I need and lax to
buy you know, something buike or something right, so then
(33:37):
they will say, okay, I'll put into cheat fund. I'll
you know, get that money at a discounted rate so
and then use it. So it's not really a wealth
accumulating as a strategy or process, but it's mainly for
you know, you're covering your needs, you know, financial needs,
(33:58):
so for short term, right. But what we are saying is,
you know, long term, I think the ideas to assuming
that in the will grow ideas to be making these
everybody be part of it and uh and in a
very low risk way. I think mutual funds is why
we choose the path to go with. So again it's
(34:19):
long term. Keeping that in mind, I always tell my
customers that we have limit customers from gardener to Pujari,
you know, to people are putting about thousands pieces a
day into wealth up so they are you know, I'm
getting my id folks also professors and people like that
(34:41):
also be part of this. Uh So there are you know,
as I speak to more people. I mean there are
a lot of people not investing because they don't know
too much about investing, so they are quite excited. I
think for me, they told you like different target customers,
I need to have different messages, but they need to
be understood about what investment is all about and what
(35:05):
the benefits. And somebody knows about investing, but they don't
know how to do it. So it's different tigments of
customers that we need to.
Speaker 1 (35:12):
I think, sorry, really good, oh thank you, so like
you know, moving forward, right, this is lying when people
start investing. So it's a great flexible option they have,
right limit you can invest a small amount, can they
go up and down anytime saying you know, I feel
pretty strong through the months, I can invest more and
then bring it down during holiday season or their things.
(35:35):
But then eventually is it where they have to keep
it at the term of things or it just depends
on the mutual funds they invested in, or how does
that wealth return look like in their journey?
Speaker 3 (35:48):
So you think how long do you want should they keep?
Speaker 2 (35:51):
How long do they keep on? What does that typical
path look like for them?
Speaker 4 (35:55):
I think, see the it's Basically, the if you look
at this strategy of investing component interest companying interest in
component returns strategy, if you cross the one crew right
the mark, you're the time that it takes to accumulate
(36:16):
one crere. Let's say it takes about ten years. The
time taking me the next one crew will take only
maybe seven years. The time taking with the next third
one crew will be you know, maybe three years. So
because you're you know, the first one care is helping
you into your next one crore quite faster.
Speaker 3 (36:35):
So it's up to them.
Speaker 4 (36:38):
But what I suggest them is keep that as a
twenty year period.
Speaker 3 (36:43):
Don't dip into this wealth.
Speaker 4 (36:47):
And then try to use it up for you know,
regular expenses. That is something that you can use it
for your milestones. The milestones could be as we're saying,
children's education, or marriage or your retirement. You keep that
as the thing and don't try to start dipping into
this pool of money. So again, the reason I'm saying
(37:10):
twenty years is that the multiplication that happens after the
fifteen years.
Speaker 3 (37:14):
When you have one crore.
Speaker 4 (37:16):
I mean usually if you go with about one hundred
rupees or two hundred piece a day for fifteen years,
you'll reach one crow about one point fac cruise by
the time you're fifteen, and then you'll see the growth
from fifteen to twenty explode like anything because every year
you'll accumulate about twenty five acts from fifteen because once
you have started about one point f ruds. So that
(37:39):
is the thing that potential that they have to look
into because if you take money off from your pool,
there that growth you won't see again. So by the
time if you're investing about your two hundred rupees, by
the time it is twenty years, you could really make
about two point fact ruds.
Speaker 3 (37:57):
That potential come only a few.
Speaker 4 (38:00):
Don't take anything from your pool and keep that as
for your long term milestones.
Speaker 1 (38:04):
That's actually great, right because that gives gives a good
future vision for people to go invest in. And you
spoke about how quick things are to validate who the
person is coming in when they can invest you have
good mutual funds and so talking about just security right
like people are investing their harder money.
Speaker 2 (38:24):
How and what.
Speaker 1 (38:25):
God raans do you have in place or you're planning
to put in place around you?
Speaker 3 (38:30):
A good question.
Speaker 4 (38:30):
So see one thing is saying before the mandate that
we take is exclusively for buying mutual funds, exclusively for
the person whose bank name is on. So you cannot
be taking money from one bank account and buying it
on different bank a different person's name. So the mutual
(38:52):
fund will be allocated only on the person where the
money is coming from. So you can, for example, you
cannot have your wife buy you mutual funds in India.
I mean, I don't know how it is in the US,
but you the money has to go from your name,
that's when it will be located to you, So it
(39:15):
cannot be located or anybody else's name. So first thing,
so it means that the money is not going anywhere.
And the money the bank mandate that we take is
only for the purchase of mutual funds. It can be bought,
it can be taken for buying stocks or options or anything.
Speaker 3 (39:32):
Else, just for mutual funds. And again as saying, it's
just for on your name.
Speaker 4 (39:37):
So first thing, there's no risk of money in getting
diverted any other any other way. Right, it has to
be from the bank to the mutual fund company for
the purchase of mutual funds on behalf of the bank
holder's name. So that is very clear. So second think
is okay, the data itself that we have, we are
not We are just you know, initiating all these transactions,
(40:00):
so we don't have to uh you know, we we
we do keep records of all the mutual funds or
purchases that happen through our app. But again this data
is reflective of what is in the market. Uh will
Each AMC maintains their own records of customers data, so
(40:21):
it's not like there's a data loss or data corruption
doesn't happen on our end. It's basically obviously it's all
encrypted with you know users uh mpin and uh you
know they use wiety, but it's just our data is
just reflect to what is out there. So even if
they get out of the app for some reason they
(40:42):
don't want to use that, they can always go to
the AMC, UH the set management company.
Speaker 3 (40:48):
Look at they put their.
Speaker 4 (40:50):
PAN number, which is basically similar to your Social Security number,
and we will see all the mutual funds which are
purchased through not just wealth Up, but any other instruments
that any other platforms they have used to buy. Right,
So it's it's completely transparent in that way. And we
are just you know, keeping that data only so that
(41:10):
they can show they can show, we can show that
in the app. But we are not the owners of
the data, right, So even if the app doesn't exist,
that data is there with AMCs, right, it's uh, you know,
it has nothing to do with us. So we are
the just initiator of the transaction. So as we're saying,
(41:31):
I think money is completely secured. The transactions are completely
encrypted on outside, and the access to the app itself
is two factor authenticated. So somebody who just comes in
you need to have their EW phone number and an
MPIN and an o TP so it comes to their
(41:52):
email or phone number or phone. So it's secured that way.
And you know, nobody can initiate a transaction on somebody's
name unless they have you know, access to their mpin
and you know OTP. So that's completely secure. So again, uh,
you know, we use very strict encryptions. Uh so data
(42:17):
in your customer data in our database can be even
seen by our own edmin uh you know people, so
it'll be all encrypted with the mpin of the user.
So that level of encryption is there.
Speaker 5 (42:31):
I think if tass enough with wealth, it's time to
show welt Up to the world and maybe give us
a walkthrough.
Speaker 4 (42:41):
Yeah, let me do that. So give me one second.
We're gonna share my screen. Okay, So Epina wants you
see my screen. This is Wealth Up. H Yeah.
Speaker 3 (42:53):
So I'm just logging in with my mpin.
Speaker 4 (42:55):
I'm showing my portfolio and have been investing since last
four months or so because the app has been in
full functionality since four months. So I started with about
three hundred rupees per day, but now it's I'm putting
about six hundred. So I do want to invest in
Wealth Up. And we do have around third thousand customers
(43:19):
right now. Again they come from all walks of life,
from teachers to professors to guardeners and pujaris. So and
what you can see here it just shows you your portfolio.
That's my portfolio is seventy four persand and this is
the gain that I got about thirty four hundred rupees
in the last four months. And this number shows you
(43:43):
what is spending, which is today the transaction for six
hundred rupees has been initiated. This is the money that
was sent to AMC, which is the asset management companies
and they have not yet allocated me the funds. And
this is the total investment which is completely allocated funds
to me. And if you had to see my funds,
(44:04):
I can look at my funds here. Let me sort
by gains and so you can see what my portfolio
looks like with quite a diversified portfolio.
Speaker 3 (44:16):
With you know, different gains from different uh you know funds.
Speaker 4 (44:21):
Right, how many units are have in each of this
fun and how much value I have? How much did
I buy it for average price? I bought it for
what is the current value? And all this stuff. So
I'll just show you one very interesting thing which when
I go to my daily plan, right, this is where
I actually put in my six hundred piece. I can
(44:43):
change it anytime. I can make it two hundred. So
and I can say, okay, I don't want to do
every day of a week. I want to maybe do
you know, not do on Tuesdays and Thursdays? Could do
that too, right, I can just buy one click, I
can disable my investment. If I just click on this,
it will disable my investment and then no more money
(45:05):
will be taken from me going forward. Right, this is
one click. So if the user says okay, I don't
want to invest for the next one week. He can
just come or she can come and I click on
this and disable it and then they can come back
and enable when they want. Right. So, so, as I
was saying, you can change your daily investment any time
(45:25):
you want, and you can also shift a monthly a
plan as well. So I can say if I want
to invest fifteen hundred every first of the month, or
I can say in additionally, I can do every eighteenth
of the month, or you can put any number like
you can say I want to do for every twenty
sixth of the month. So I can pick and date
and amount that I want to invest in each of
(45:47):
those days. Right, So I'll we call it monthly, but
it actually is, you know, more frequently than just monthly. Right,
So you could do all that. So now if I
come to my strategies, right I was saying before, Right now,
I'm self managed. I'm actually investing in three funds. I
have Access Bank Midcalf Fund about fifty percent, histcy balance
(46:11):
about twenty percent, and I have one MorePhone which is
Opportunity Fund, which is thirty percent. So even though I'm
putting six centrad rupees, my algorithm will decide how the
six central repeats to be split across these funds. Obviously,
it won't buy all three of them on a given day,
but it might buy two of them on a given day.
Maybe tomorrow will do this something else. But what it
(46:34):
does eventually is that it catches off with these percentages. Right,
it knows that this is my intention fifty twenty thirty,
and it ensures that eventually it catches off with that.
So every date's make a decision how much money it
has to put into each So imagine if you had
to do that manually, and you have to do if
(46:54):
this is how you want to distribute your small amounts
into these kind of percentages across this funds. It's not
an easy exercise, right. And the other thing is your
automated automanaged, which is you know you can have high
risk funds. I can say fifty percent, so this is
all defaults, so by default everybody is set to medium risk.
(47:19):
So twenty five percent high funds and fifty percent medium
funds and twenty five percent here and what are those funds?
If you come here, they can see the high risk
funds are these? The medium risk funds are these? The
low risk funds or this, right, this is the fund list.
Every day engine will look at what is the best
fund that is out in the market and based on
(47:41):
where they you know, what is their capacity. For example,
if somebody puts one hundred dupees, then it picks this
fund or one of the other funds and then invest
in there.
Speaker 3 (47:51):
Right, So minimum invest.
Speaker 4 (47:53):
Purchases what it looks at and also looks at, you know,
what is the best fund for that day that it
has to peak in the high risk right, So that
does that your determination on a daily basis.
Speaker 3 (48:06):
So okay, let me go back here to my strategy.
Speaker 4 (48:10):
So one more interesting thing that we have done is
you can build your own custom strategy. For example, I
could say that I want to, you know, define my
custom risk profile as I want to put sixty five
percent in this, or maybe sixty percent in this and
maybe twenty percent in this and twenty percent in this. Right,
(48:33):
I could define my own You don't have to go
with the presets. So the engine will ensure that these
percentages are you know, matched up eventually when it's investing
every days, make sures that, you know, if we are
closer to these percentages right when you're in when it's
putting the money in. So that's called automanaged as well. Yeah, yeah,
(48:56):
please good.
Speaker 5 (48:58):
No, I mean yes, so are super theleer. I don't
have any questions of super impressive, very self intuitive and
easy to manage. So yeah, I like it so far.
Speaker 4 (49:11):
Thank you. So I'll just see you one more thing.
If you just look at my portfolio as it's growing.
I mean May is made June and July. I think
I was investing about three hundred rupees and after that
I started six hundred rupees and you can see how
it is growing and really redeeming. It's very simple, you can.
(49:31):
I mean, we don't encourage people to readeem because that's
not the best strategy of investing here. But if they
want to readeem, they can always come here redeem, click
on the redeem and then you know, it shows you
how many units you have, how many how much value
you have. You can reading by units of the value.
And there is there are two things that we are
now you're building up. One is which will come in
(49:55):
the next one week or two is redeeming a bulk
on for exams. I have seventy four thousand and I
want to readem ten thousand from there, right, So the
system will tell me what is the best way it
readium redemption has to happen across the funds. So it
will come up and say, based on your profile, based
(50:16):
on funds that are in your portfolio, based on how
the funds are performing, it's going to say, reading three
thousand from this, one, two thousand from here, five thousand
from here. It's going to give you a strategy and
you can just act upon it.
Speaker 6 (50:30):
Right.
Speaker 4 (50:31):
So redeeming also is completely automated in a way that
it comes with the best recommendation for you can always
change it if you want. The other thing is rebalancing.
Rebalancing is now that you have if you look at
my portfolio here, if I go through gaining loss and
I'll sort it by loss, right, you see that Nippon
(50:52):
India Multi. This is actually I have about three hundred
piece invested and it's actually down and compared to if
I sorted here, my best performing fund is eight point
eight percent. It's giving me in the last four months
that support if we had just seed two a yearly
basis about twenty five percent return on it. So I
(51:16):
think basically the rebalancing is where customer can initiate or
the system will initiate saying that it's time to rebalance.
It's going to prompt the user. You know, why don't
you take money from your bad performing and put into
good performing funds. So that rebalancing is a huge thing.
I mean if you look at you know, customers who
(51:36):
don't know how to do that and customers who are
not you know, savvy enough to understand the nuances of
emmutual fund, how it is you know structured, and what
the portfolio of mutual fund is and all this stuff,
you know, leading them promptly, you know, prompting them to change,
you know, rebalancing it in a very automated fashion is
(51:59):
a very iportant thing because the whole idea about wealth
up is not just automating stuff, but also ensuring that
they get the maximum writtens. I mean, you want to
obviously beat the index funds by you know, by miles, right,
So if index fund is giving like fifteen person, you
want to you know, have them maybe about five percent
(52:21):
extra on that. So you know that the whole idea
is to you know, come up with these kind of
algorithms which you know, pick the right funds. Help them
reading stuff in the right way, help them rebalance their
portfolio right way. So all the thing is getting built.
I mean, think of this way. You are getting a
(52:41):
very expert investment advisor for free here in addition to
being all automated for you, right, just with one hundred
piece a day. Right, you know that is something that's unbeatable.
Speaker 3 (52:53):
I mean, if you look at it.
Speaker 5 (52:56):
Very cool, Ram, very nicely done, and super easy for
anyone to onboard. And you know, as you were saying,
I mean I was thinking about a presentation I did
recently as well. I mean, you know, India's digital revolution
helps with this as well, right, because I mean in
the last ten to fifteen years, I mean, you know,
everybody has a cell phone or two and this is
(53:19):
in their fingertips right now. They don't have to go
to a bank, they don't have to sit down with somebody.
I mean, they can take the help of somebody, even
if it is somebody on the older side not digitally savvy.
They can just take the help of a family member
to still get this done super easily. Right, So that
adds to it as well. So Ram, I mean, what
(53:42):
was the inspiration for doing this given I mean, of
course you have the financial background and so did it.
Where did you get the spark to say, hey, I
mean you know there's a good, good place to invest
time and money.
Speaker 3 (53:55):
I think, I mean there is a two answers to this.
Speaker 4 (54:00):
One is is it I think the way I believe
in God and I think there's a divinely inspiration that
came to me. That's a long story. I won't go there.
But there was that spark that really spark came from
a divinely message, which is a different time for that.
Speaker 3 (54:19):
But I think I looked at it as.
Speaker 4 (54:22):
A path where you see that there is there's so
much that people can benefit from an app like this. Uh,
it has a social cost to you, right there is
there is a reason why you see so much uh
your message that's coming from Indian government itself in making
(54:44):
people aware of benefits of financial investment and encouraging.
Speaker 3 (54:49):
Them to invest.
Speaker 4 (54:50):
And there is, uh, there is a reason for that.
They want people to be, you know, part of this
Indian's growth story. I think, uh, so you're the best
way to get that is to make sure that people
can you know, simplify the whole process of investing. Even
for somebody who's not educated, like my gardener, who doesn't
(55:11):
he know what stocks mean? So how do you bring
even from somebody from there to all the way to
like a professor in a university. It is a customer
of mind. So people I mean they don't have time.
I mean if a professor might be able to understand everything,
but he or she doesn't have time to understand and
(55:32):
sit down and sput the time to see what is
the best way to invest and what are the best
mutual funds of stocks to invest in? And it's a game,
right and how do you play it rightly? Is you
know they might not be aware of these things. So
how do you bring in financial inclusion of all these
people into this right in a simple, uh, you know,
automated way so that everybody benefits. There is a huge
(55:55):
social cost to this if you look a cost to this,
if you look at.
Speaker 5 (55:59):
Itto that angle, yeah perfect, yeah, yeah. So around before
we wrap up, we want to ask you something that
we ask all our founders and guests. I mean, what
can the community do for you? I mean, are you
looking for investors or or right now are you just
looking for people to download it, use it, give feedback
to make it better.
Speaker 6 (56:18):
I mean, what do you what do you want from
the community.
Speaker 4 (56:20):
Yeah, I think mainly I want people to understand the
app and be users of it in download it and
use it. And again investment, We're not looking for investors
at this point. I mean, this is something that we
built in the last two years with our own money. Again,
I was saying, this is we have a service company,
(56:41):
so obviously you have other means of supporting this app financially.
So it's all built organically within the organization.
Speaker 3 (56:50):
And so at this point we're not looking for investors.
Speaker 4 (56:52):
But obviously I'm open to somebody who's not just brings money,
but also brings in a huge wealth of uh, you know,
marketing something like this, uh for Indian market, who understands
how to take an app like this to the next level.
(57:13):
So if somebody comes to that kind of uh vast
knowledge and has in roads into insights into you know,
taking us to the next level, will be definitely I
would like to associate with somebody like that. Yeah, not
just for the investing money, but I was saying, like
some partner who will be you know, who has that
kind of uha.
Speaker 5 (57:34):
Take it to the next level. Yeah, exactly, Okay, thanks Ron.
Speaker 1 (57:38):
Yeah, now this is this is a great aproground, like
you mentioned right, getting that financial investment capability. So the
masses is a worthy cause and I love like how
you spark and shining when you mentioned that that was
the drive behind it.
Speaker 2 (57:52):
So well, well, we wish you good luck. This was great.
Speaker 1 (57:57):
I think about wealth up and we wish you all
the best of up with your future endeavors. And we'll
wait to see where this goes and and track the progress.
Speaker 2 (58:06):
So thank you for taking the time and talking to us.
Speaker 4 (58:08):
Today, you guys, thank you, thank you for giving me
this opportunity again, be appreciated lot. Thanks all the best,
Thank you guys. By then,
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