Ep 146: The Platform Play for India’s Financial Advisors ft. Wealthy.in

Speaker A: Any business is built business of trust, right? Even if uh, uh, a D2C new company is coming on board, right? They're building trust by reviews that early customer puts or by podcasts or by influencers. Everybody is building trust and more so in fintech because in consumer you are basically the. If it's a small ticket item, people may just use it and then just get the first transaction, at least from a customer. But for the repeats, you need that product to be good, etc. Etc. And.

Speaker B: Welcome to Founders Unfiltered. I'm Aviral here with Mazen. Today's guest is Prashant Gupta, co founder of Wealthy, one of the few tech first advisor first platforms that are bridging the gap between traditional distribution and modern wealth management. It's a very big gap in India today that Wealthy is serving. Uh, the company focuses on empowering independent mutual fund distributors or MFDs and helping them serve clients better through tech insights and modern infra. The company today manages over 5000 crores in AUM and processes 200 crores in monthly transactions. They've seen their annualized revenue grow from 12 crores to 40 crores in just the last three years. Uh, they're also interestingly the second largest recruiter of financial advisors in India and they onboard about 350 new advisors each month. Uh, their goal is to expand to a network of 50,000 distributors and 1 lakh crore in AUM, um, by 2030. In this episode we'll dive into Prashant's journey from an iitim background to building wealthy and the lessons in navigating India's wealth, tech landscape and his philosophy on building a business that scales. Prashant, welcome to the podcast.

Speaker A: Thanks Abril. Thanks Mazin.

Speaker B: Always nice to have an IMA alum on the pod.

Speaker A: Yeah, same here. Same here.

Speaker B: Cool. We'll uh, start with a rapid fire. Um, just want to begin with something to understand you more than the LinkedIn bio, uh, who's a founder or leader you'd blindly back.

Speaker A: I don't think I'll blindly whack anyone except Aditya, who's going to. But uh, what I would look at is first is corporate ethics or ethics rather. And then uh, you know, ability to persevere is the two things I will look at. Uh, if I have to back something

Speaker C: one book, film or mental model that shaped how you think

Speaker A: with respect to what I do. I think uh, uh, Psychology of Money, uh, by Morganhausen. That kind of uh, is very a uh, good read. Uh, basically it says about wealth isn't just about returns. It's about understanding your risk and time horizon. So that is something that I really like as a book.

Speaker B: What's a myth about personal finance or investments you'd like to publicly bust and maybe inspired by Morgan?

Speaker A: I think me main thing is that people think that you need a lot of money to start, but actually the important thing is that you need to just start and then everything follows.

Speaker B: Nice. That's a good one.

Speaker C: Your go to ritual or daily habit that keeps you sane,

Speaker A: uh, spending uh, at least an hour in the morning with my daughter. She's uh, three and a half. So that is something that I do, uh, you know, every day. So. And the dropping her to school that is also these two parts I do every day, try to do every day.

Speaker B: Awesome. Uh m. If wealthy didn't exist, what would you be building?

Speaker A: I don't know. I think I would be probably, you know, I realized very early that I was, you know, I want to be in finance or start my own business is kind of, you know, connecting the dots for me are very good that both of the things are the same. Right. I'm doing some building my business in finance. So if not then I would be probably, you know, working in as investment banker, which I was doing before

Speaker C: your latest AI hack, uh, tool or use case that surprised you?

Speaker A: Yeah, I keep surprising all the time. Uh, but I tried to make a travel uh, itinerary and uh, you know, after a couple of iterations were pretty, pretty bang on with what, what I wanted. So that was pretty good.

Speaker B: Super. Uh, Prashant would love to first understand probably for people who've not heard of what. Well the is what wealthy does. Uh, could you describe what you're building and whom you're building for?

Speaker A: So wealthy is a wealth tech platform. Uh, it's B2B2C. So uh, essentially we empower MFTS who already are in this business or people who want to get in this business. Right. From licensing to uh, getting them on board, uh, you know, telling them about the business opportunity from there to getting them to onboard the first client to uh, doing transactions, reporting to the client. Uh, the whole life cycle of a client management. Everything can be done on wealthy. Uh, there are three pillars to the business essentially. One is recruitment, which is getting new mfds, uh, into this business. Second is the platform which is, which is super, super good. And third is how do you engage and upgrade the mfds with respect to the new changes that keep coming and upgrading them. Right. So we look at all the three aspects uh, in a wealth manager's or an MFD's life and kind of uh, you know add value in all the three legs.

Speaker B: Got it. And um, do they not have access to tools? What is their life without you and why are you useful to them?

Speaker A: Yeah, so um, a uh, lot of experience. Uh, so let's say some of the uh, IFAs who are in this business before MFD rather who are in this business, they would uh, use uh, piecemeal solutions, right. For research they'll use something. For transactions they'll use something. Therefore reporting they'll use something. And generally these are solopreneurs, right? One or two or three people working together. So there is a lot of uh, leverage that they get from using a platform like wealthy, where they should spend more time is with their clients rather you know, spending time on the back end work. Right. That all heavy lifting etc is done on wealthy. So they get more and more time and more productive time towards their clients and towards the business. Right. So, so mean just to uh, I mean give you a start, um, uh, wealth advisor MFD before coming to us. If he does X, he's able to do 2 1/2 to 3x uh productive productivity after coming on wealthy.

Speaker B: I think that's a very interesting uh category which very few people think about. And were there any early influences for you? What, where did you grow up? What was early life like? Uh, did you always want to be an entrepreneur? Did you have exposure to this space? Um, how did you get here?

Speaker A: So I uh grew up in a town called Indore. Um, it's, you can call it a tier 2 or tier 3 depending how you categorize it. But back then it used to be a sleepy town. Um and my father used to work with a private pharmaceutical firm. Uh and my mother was a home, is a homemaker. Was a homemaker. And um, you know the value system we grew up around was uh, was hard work, uh, and doing uh, things right. Uh these two kind of values were kind of uh, quite inculcated in that sense. And I've seen my father toil from 7:30 in the morning, used to be out of the door at 7:30 in the morning, come back at 9 for 30, 35 years. Right. Throughout his uh, career. Uh, right. So that I've uh seen very closely. Uh my father's side interestingly everybody was in a job, uh services. Um, and uh, and, and my mother's side was uh, completely into business. Right. So I've seen both sides and the Benefits in the. And. And the demerits and merits of both the sides, um, uh, within the family. And I've also seen how education uh, you know, has helped uh, uplift the family. Right. So my grandfather like uh, you know I lost him a couple of months back. But uh, he uh, you know he uh, was the first one to become a graduate uh in the whole family. Right. So. And he did an MBA back then. Right. So uh. And then my father and his uncles all you know, went to good schools. Uh, my father went to bits back then. My uncle went to Ames. Uh, one of the uncles became ca. So I've seen that uplift, uh, which education has created in the family, uh, right from you know, the, the value system because it was inculcated by the grandfather and, and how it has helped everybody move up uh, in the. You know, in the uh. In the hierarchy of society so to say. Or uh. So. So that I've seen, uh. I've seen on the business side from my mom's side, uh, essentially, uh, you know, know I used to believe that entrepreneurs have more control uh over time. And that was very enamoring that because my father used to go at 7:30, come back at 9 and my, my. My mama ji or my mom's side they would basically you know have decide on their time. So that was kind of the positive side uh, that I used to kind of look at from the, from the, From. From an entrepreneur or business side, which I later realized it's not true. But. Yeah, but that was something, um. Something you know as a, As a kid that those things I was, I observed it probably that got ingrained into me and um. I think I, I remember back in um. Back in uh, when I was growing up that you uh. Know I wanted to do something on my own. Right. Even if it is just deciding which career to go into. I was. Because my grandfather was a lawyer, he wanted somebody in the family to become a lawyer and take his legacy. And I said no, I don't want to do that at a very young age. Right. Because I wanted to decide on my own. Um, I don't know where it comes from, but it was just it. And I see that in my daughter as well. I think uh. It's just something uh. That something is built in and um. Think yeah. I mean that that was a growing up years then. Um. I remember. I mean it was because Indore was a sleepy town. Um, back. Back in standard 8th or 9th even didn't know anything. I was just good at academics. And then um, you know, even a simple thing like ntsc, which people from big towns will know about. I didn't know about it. There was a new principal who had come from, uh, from one of these, uh, you know, Dehradun schools. And in our school, and he said, your kid might, he told my parents, your kid is bright. Why don't you ask him to go to and sit for ntsc? And they're like, what? You don't get a book also to prepare for ntsc? My father got it from Hyderabad. Back then, um, in Indore, you didn't get any book to prepare and we didn't even have a clue. I didn't even know Iit because my, my cousin went into IIT two years ahead of me. That's how I came to know about iit. Um, my father knew about it because he tried for it and he went to bitsto. But uh, but you know, it was just, you're good academy. You were in a very protective bubble at home and just doing what you're told to do. Go to school, study books, give exams, etc. Etc. But then your world starts to expand and your world starts to expand from different sources of information that uh, you get to know. So that's how uh, um, got to know about iit didn't uh, know how to prepare for it, uh, back then, this is 99. Um, and then I said, okay, I'll, I'll sit in. There was some coaching class in Indore, you know, my father said, yeah, you go there and you prepare for it. And to that coaching class, saw that they were sitting, you know, cross legged, uh, in the class, I will, I will sit on a table and chair. Uh, I was like, no, you have to sit. And I like, I can't go there. I want to go somewhere else to prepare. So somehow got to know about uh, quota. And that's an interesting story as well, but uh, because back then 99, nobody know. Very few people outside Rajasthan knew about quota. But um, um, I just, just went to Kota, uh, and then from there uh, got, got to go Madras, did my electrical engineering. Um, didn't know how to speak English as well. Went to English medium school. But uh, you know, it was good at writing, reading. But because all my school uh, friends were uh, Sindhi business, family. So all of it was Hindi all the time. Right. So didn't know how to speak English as well in iit. My roommate was from La Matanya, Calcutta. So he would, he introduced me to Frederick Forsyth and Jeffrey, uh, Archer. Jeffrey Archer. I found Very easy to read. And uh, so that's how I kind of. And he used to get the Hindu in the morning. Uh, so I started reading the Hindu, uh, and that was good. And um, that kind of these thing and his, I mean he being my roommate, I kind of used to talk to. He didn't speak much of Hindi but so that's how it forced me to speak in English. Uh, and uh, you know, got okay, uh, you know, speaking English, uh, at the age of 18, 19 rather. Um, then I was clear that I want to work for some time and then go to uh, an mba. Uh, uh, so I got an opportunity to work. I had three ah, offers um, after iit, decided uh, to join one. And uh, that turned out to be uh, a company which had come from campus placement. But it turned out the company was a sham. Right. So, so um, so basically after having three offers, I had no, no, no job after three, three months out of graduating. Then I called Aditya. I knew because we prepared for Jee together in Kota. So I called him. He was, he was, he had graduated from IIT Bombay. He had joined Evalu Serve. I said uh, you know I, I want a job. And he said uh, yeah, yeah, you send your CVL and uh, I'll forward it internally. And got into Evalu, did that for a year. Then while being in Evalu, I've got an opportunity to uh, interview for Society General in Tokyo, which was a French investment bank and they were looking for uh, engineering grads who can kind of uh, were pretty good at math and could uh, work on the options desk as analysts, etc. So you know, mugged up the hull and everything and just gave the interview and uh, got through and uh, one of the interesting questions, all the French gentlemen took the interview and it was very interesting. They asked uh, you know, we have seen in people, they're vegetarians, they will not be able to adjust in Tokyo, blah blah blah. Will you be able to adjust? Etc? I said yeah, I read just everywhere. Uh, you know I grew up in Indore, went to Kota, uh, studied in Chennai in India. Every 100 km, the culture, language, food, everything changes. I've adjusted to that. I'll be able to adjust in Tokyo. So just went there. Um, that was an eye opening experience for the first time in Tokyo, uh, working on a trading flow with French guys. Um, and uh, right. So that was uh, learned a lot. Learned a lot. Um, understood that by finance you have a um, high uh, return on, I call it roe, return on effort. Uh, so then basically Decided that this is something that I want to do all my life around finance. Uh, and uh, before going I had given my cat. So I uh, got all the calls, came back, did my interviews and got through and then decided to pursue IIM Ahmedabad. And uh, yeah, IIM Ahmedabad. If you remember 2008 was a really bad, a very good year actually. 2007 was a really good year for internships. Um, and 2009 was really bad year for final placements because in between the Lehman crisis happened and Bears in crisis happening. So I got an intern uh, internship at Morgan. Um, and uh, the guy who interviewed me was Carlo's uh, son or actually nephew Carlo who was the uh, ECB chairman for uh, the longest period of time his son um, he, he, he interviewed me actually. Mario Draghi was the ECB chairman and his son Carlo, Carlo Draghi, uh, his nephew Kalodragi interviewed me and then I got through and, and then did my internship uh, with Morgan in London and New York. Great uh, experience. Joined Morgan in London after graduating. Uh, even after graduating we didn't know that Morgan is going to survive or not. So I was writing emails, is this pre placement offer even going to stand? And uh, uh, the guy who was going to join his desk, he said I don't know if my job is going to survive or not. Because Morgan was the next bastion after, after Bears, uh, Lehman and then it was Morgan. So ultimately that fructified and joined uh Morgan in uh London, um, and was doing structuring and sales. So creating new products, pricing them, selling them through distribution houses and networks from Nordics to Iberia at different points of time. Um, back then did something in Russia as well. Largest, second largest insurance company called Ingostrac. We uh, you know, did a transaction, you know, learned a lot at Morgan, then uh, got an opportunity to work with uh, Morgan Stalley wealth management in the U.S. so Morgan had uh, acquired this um, network of rather a company called Smith Barney which was a network of 18,000 uh, advisors, uh, who used to serve clients more than 500k dollars. So that gave a lot of experience and exposure because I would create products from the London desk and sell it in the network in the US and uh, got to speak to some of these guys, got to understand why people use advisors and us probably is a 25 year market ahead of us in terms of maturity etc. And 90% of the assets were still moving through advisor. And it's still true even after 10 years from there. Right? 90% of the assets are still held by Advisors, right? Uh, DIY is very, very small. Um, and you know, as a young guy I would ask why, you know, why can't they just go to betterment or go to this platform and just do diy, right? And uh, and some of the things that I understood was basically why do people need advices, right? Uh, why do they exist? One is time, right? People don't have time. Um, and as we progress in our careers in life, you know, uh, the time is even more scarce, right? As a, as a young guy from, from after you graduated, right, you are in college, you will experiment with everything and you'll, your money will be small and you will experiment, you'll have time on your hand, which all of us did as well. In Ima second year I was, I had a Kotak 3 in one account and I was experimenting with my dom mates money and my money uh, back then in my second year. But as you, as your time becomes a more scarce commodity, uh, you need somebody to poke you and bring this in the to do list of things to do. Bring it in the top one or two things for you to look at, right? So that is one second skill set, right? Um, some people who are around finance find it very easy, but a lot of people, it doesn't kind of, they don't find it easy, right? So it's uh, the skill set. Even if I have, if I want to develop a skillset as a, let's say software developer, I want to develop skill around personal finance. I'd rather spend that time developing my coding skills or whatever main job I'm doing, right? Uh, so that skill is uh, third is, which is the most important is behavioral control, right? Uh, because in finance it's about uh, the advisors a lot of times is controlling your behavior as an investor. I remember one specific incident around Covid, right. In April 2020, uh, one of these, um, one of the uh, clients basically called um, one of the advisors and spoke to him and he said uh, I think the world is going to end, so I want all my money out. Um, and then uh, I said okay, uh, what if the world is going to end then why even bother, right? Uh, you know, then Your, let's say 1 crore is going to become zero, all of us going to die. So then doesn't matter if your view of world is going to end is true. But if it doesn't end and it's going to be bouncing back, uh, looking at the human history because back then nobody knew there will be a vaccine and when we'll come out of it, right? April 2020 or May 2020. Everybody was panicking right when is going to end or what is going to happen. And we were able to tell, put the context to him that what were you doing in 2007 or 8? He said I was a analyst at McKinsey and uh, in the US and then what were you, what were other people doing? He said people who had money put money and they made a lot of money. I was like maybe this is the moment for you to uh, do the same. Uh, but if you think everybody's going to die, then it doesn't matter to take out your money, right? Because it's not going to be any of any use. It's going to, all the humanity is going to die, then it's going to be zero. That kind of broad perspective. And then he could have, you know, held on to his investment and actually doubled down over the next few weeks. And uh, you know, uh, those are the examples of why advisors are needed for putting context and having behavioral check.

Speaker C: Uh, so walk us through those kind of early days when you decided to start wealthy. You, you had this belief, you knew advisors were needed, you kind of saw their role. Um, how did you kind of take it from there and decide to take the leap?

Speaker A: So we started well in 2016 and uh, we thought that uh, in India, like even from my learnings in the US etcetera, uh we thought that India will leapfrog. Like in the telecom case when we went from, we didn't go to landlines, we straight away went to mobile phones here people will go to being diy, right? So we built a robo advisory back then in 2016 uh, and we were the first ones to build KYC online. Uh, uh, we thought that's the best invention since slight spread and um, you know it turned out everybody copied it after three, four months. If KYC is all the fintech founders uh right now, right from that time. So um, but what, so your technology or product can get very, very copied, uh, get copied very fast in India. Uh, that was kind of the learning. And then we were seeing that CAC in that business was uh, decently high. Um, and we had no plan, we were not able to formulate a plan to bring that CAC down because your fintech businesses are high operating leverage businesses. Right? So you have decently fixed fixed costs which doesn't change much. But uh, uh, you need to fix your CAC and customer servicing cost. Right? So if you can make them variable, um, then, or you find another way to make them very low or through content or something. All brand building etc. Which takes time, uh, or you variabilize them. Uh, that's how you kind of uh, you know, are able to build uh, uh, any business rather. But more, more in fintech. So we were not able to figure that out. And uh, from 2016 and 18 we ran that for a couple of years. We were figuring out what to kind of, we were trying a couple of pivots and 20, 19 end rather uh, 20 beginning is when we pivoted towards the B2B2C advisor led model. And from there from the last, that last four, four and four, four and a half year journey has been, has been very good. Right. So from a no product market fit to an amazing product market fit as founders, like uh, you know, people ask how do you uh, how do you know that you have a product market for like you know, you know when it is there, right? You know that your CAC is stabilized, your CAC is probably going down, uh, you know, amount of stuff that you want to sell is selling, etc. Right. So you know, people are coming on organically on their own, you know, you know that, right? If you're true to yourself, you know, when there is a product market, the

Speaker C: pivot must have been painful. I mean you now looking back it's like oh, we just switched. But you'd worked on this for so long, how did you kind of pull off that pivot and how did you get your first few advisors on the platform?

Speaker A: So the pivot was also coming from the fact that CAC was not going down. But we saw one thing that uh, about 20% of or maybe 10% of the customers were significantly contributing higher than the uh, other customers. And the Persona of these customers were very, very similar. So what we did was we hired one guy and we asked him to talk to these other customers of the 90% who are not increasing their account sizes. And out of them a lot of them started increasing their account sizes as soon as that person started talking to them.

Speaker C: Interesting.

Speaker A: Um, so then we realized that a conversation is needed. Um, and that's ah, why uh, we then kind of brought another guy who spoke to that base and then we said now this base we're not going to spend on cac, but how do we get other advisors to come onto the platform? Uh, because it's a business of trust. Any business is built business of trust. Even if uh, uh, a D2C new company is coming on board, they're building trust by, by Reviews that early customer puts or by podcasts or by influencers. Everybody is building trust. Uh, and more so in fintech, because in consumer you are basically, if it's a small ticket item, people may just use it and then you'll get the first transaction at least from customer. But for the repeats, you need that product to be good, etc. Etc. And then, but um, for fintech, because the amount of money is larger, right? Uh, especially in wealth, uh, that is getting transacted. You need the trust to be, you

Speaker C: need it up front. People are not going to try it out like buying a T shirt and

Speaker A: then see if it's quality. People are not going to try it out with a small amount of money. Maybe they do. Uh, but then how do you uh. So trust can be built by several things, right? Either from uh, the product builds the trust. In some of the B2C or DIY cases, that is what the case where the product is building the trust and uh, what you're saying, uh, actually comes true after the use of the product essentially. Uh, which in m, uh, wealth management case may not be true because the 5,000 rupees you put today, uh, may become 4,900, 900 tomorrow. And in the long term it will, of course it'll become higher but in the short term that you know, it can go down as well. Right. So how do you build that trust around the uh, uh, around. Ultimately much harder. Yeah, it's much harder. It's not easy. Right. So that's where uh, you know, we kind of got uh, the first few advisors. Basically, uh, we ran a digital campaign, uh that if you want to start a business and you want to use a platform, then we got the first few advisors. I remember the first, uh, you know, and this is middle of COVID right? The first few, um, you know, zooms that meetings we did with prospects, right. Two people. But we did uh, the whole session we were expecting at least 32, 40, but two people. And that two people didn't change for the next six months, two or three or four people will come in every uh, onboarding session. And then, you know, and slowly. But then once you deliver uh, on what you were promising, right, in terms of uh, your client, the advisor's client experience, the advisors, um, uh, you know, experience that you were uh, giving him and you deliver on that, that's trust starts compounding.

Speaker C: And in what way was it word of mouth, advisors talking to each other or like how, how did that. Or just.

Speaker A: It was word of mouth, it was us kind of um, uh, you know, running some referrals, etc, it was us kind of reaching to the right, starting reaching the right audience. Uh, we started using the right language to talk to that audience uh, who wanted to come. So that kind of started. Uh, and then every time they will come and they will basically do few clients like one or two clients or three clients and then wait for them to uh, complete the transaction, the whole report getting generated after that and wait for one cycle of, of uh, their compensation to be paid and then they will start adding more clients. Right. So uh, that trust uh, ecosystem in the beginning took time to build but now people are like in the advisor community, people know about the MFD community, people know about wealthy and know that uh, the trust is already built in. So we don't see that challenge now. And now that trust is now compounding. Uh and that's why uh, now we are the second largest uh recruiter of IFAs every, every month. And then first the person we, who's, who's uh ahead of US is a 30 year old legacy firm.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker A: So incredible.

Speaker C: So yeah, and I mean we want to kind of, when we take a step back and talk about it more generally. How do you build trust in a fintech business? Uh, maybe as advice for our listeners, um, what are some of the things you can do and what, what are some of the things that worked well for you?

Speaker A: Yeah, I think, I think it's fundamentally like take a step back. Every business is about building trust with the customer, right. As the D2DC example I was giving, right? If you are uh, let's say uh, a restaurant or a D2C company which is trying to sell ghee, for example a new ghee, you will try to do it first, you will do it probably in this day and age by content, right? About uh, this is sourced from here, blah blah blah, etc. And then slowly, slowly uh, and then you will try to build on that trust after delivering the product. The customer will like the product. Whatever benefits you have said they will come through. In a restaurant's case you will say we'll try to build from reviews, people will look at reviews and then it becomes a flywheel from there. Right? So initial trust building uh, is difficult and hard and it takes perseverance to build. But post that also uh, delivering on what you are saying. If you're saying to the advisor that I'm going to deliver this feature in the next quarter or the quarter after, then you have to deliver in that quarter, in the quarter after, uh, delivering what you say is very important to build trust. Uh and in any business and from any business to going to Fintech because fintech is more, because it's about money and the transaction value is higher uh then it becomes uh M. You need to have higher guardrails around trust. Right? Whatever you say. And you need deliver and from Fintech if you uh, go to wealth tech because even the transaction values are even higher relatively. Uh and also in fintech in general, let's say your payment app, right. From point A to point B, you have to take the money, right. So it's instant in this day and age it's instant uh confirmation, right. I have to take money from your Mazen's account to let's say Aviral's account and it's done. Right. Once Mazen kind of puts here. Aviral kind of confirms in few seconds that he's got it right. But in wealth what you are doing today is going to yield results after five years, right. So it's more and more longer horizon. Right. And just doing the transaction is just not the case. Right? What you are kind of saying that in long term you're going to. I'm going to create wealth for you. That takes time and it's not instant gratification. Right. So it takes even more longer time to build that trust. Right. And for that you need constant intervention. Uh as I gave the example of uh, behavioral control and uh, uh with the advisor to the client who's going to do that servicing. It's just not about the cac. It's also about the cost of servicing that trust over the last next five years. So that's where the advisors kind uh of come in and build that trust uh with the customer and do a constant uh, you know, check in uh, on, on with respect to where the portfolio is going. If the market is down, their portfolio is down. What to what, what to think about, what not to think about. Right. And put things in perspective uh, for them. And that's uh, that's why in wealth you need uh, you need a person and, and globally as well people. You need advisors to build that trust constantly and, and give.

Speaker C: It's not just one time, right. You need to keep kind of reinforcing

Speaker A: it and multiple times because unlike in payments, as I said, once the transaction is done, it's done. Um, and that's if you think in that kind of scenario from a D2C or a consumer to a fintech to a wealth tech, that's the kind of difference in trust levels that you need to have. And the constant building of trust or constant reinforcing of the trust is also very important.

Speaker C: No, that makes a lot of sense. But um, talking about that and how we're evolving with gen, what's the role that you think Gen AI will play in the wealth management space? Um, I'm sure you've tried to experiment with it yourselves. Is it something you're seeing advisors asking for? Uh, or do you think it doesn't

Speaker A: have a role to play? So I think we are using gen uh, AI in three cases, right? So a, um, to increase the efficiency of our product and tech delivery. So to give an example, the same team, if they were shipping X, uh, let's say nine months back, the same team is delivering 2X, shipping 2X. Right? So that, that is one efficiency point that any company will use, not just wealth. Um, second, we are using it for um, customer partner servicing. Right. So when somebody raises a ticket, right,

Speaker C: because you spoke about cost of servicing

Speaker A: being a big factor, cost of servicing also goes down. And then it's kind of a lot of it is uh, you know, AI is able to fix the issue or at least highlight the issue and get, gets fixed rather than the you know, engineer going and finding, finding out what's the issue. Right. So that's the second part where we are uh, leveraging AI. A third part is um, uh, making uh, advisory or the mfds, um, uh, are using it to uh, do portfolio reviews uh, for some of their clients. So uh, if you have a portfolio which is held away from wealthy or with wealthy, you can uh, get a snapshot of that and then uh, the text and the context, uh, can be put around by their rule. It's rule based but a lot of text and context can be put around by AI. So that is something that we're using them for. So previously to review a client portfolio they'll take let's say half a day. If it's a large portfolio or a complex portfolio, it can be done in you know, few minutes, which is huge.

Speaker C: I mean in terms of time for

Speaker A: the advisors so they can spend more time, they can spend more time with the clients. And that productivity benefit is something that they really, really care about. Makes sense.

Speaker C: And looking back, what have been some of the hardest lessons that you've learned along the way?

Speaker A: Um, it's a marathon, it's, it's not a sprint, right? That is, that is very, very clear. Second is, I think your motivations have to be very clear to you, right? So if your motivation is to Build an institution, then it is, you know, it is that if it's your motivation is to get the next fundraise, then that's very different. Right. So it makes you act very differently. Um, so I think motivation to what you're doing, uh, is very, very important and that you have to be true to yourself. Uh, and that is very important. Second, I think, um, um, you know, just, um. Also, I think a lot of times a founder's job is to hire right and retain. Right. Right. So, uh, I think, you know, having people in the team who think like a team or who act like a team, um, we keep saying, I mean it's a cliche, but people keep saying that there's no I in. In team.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker A: And uh, so then if there are a lot of people who are just individual, like it's about themselves, right. Then that kind of doesn't work. If. Because a team can achieve much more than some of individuals can. Right. So that is something that, um, you need to be very cognizant of that if you're building a team, then it has to be, um, people who put team beyond or the final. The company beyond their own individual, uh, you know, aspirations or uh, contributions essentially.

Speaker C: And just to kind of double click on that. How do you pick up on that in an interview? What are some of the questions you ask or things you look for?

Speaker A: So, um, so a lot of times you ask what are you. Like I do ask that. What is, what are your achievements in the. What is the achievement you're proud of in the last five years or in your job, in your previous job or the job before that or the job before that. So, um, a lot of times people, um, you can get red flags from people saying, I did this despite everything being wrong around me. So I did this, uh, with this environment. It was an enabling environment. That's why you were able to achieve it.

Speaker C: Interesting.

Speaker A: Um, uh, and so that is one you can pick from. And then, uh, some of the cues that they would kind of ask, um, in terms of, um, you know, their own growth, uh, within the company, which is fair to ask. But, um. But it's very, very biased or towards. Anchored more towards their own, own goals or achievements rather than how as a team we will achieve or it's an indicator of, um. And that's one of the things that we learned at Morgan as well at interviews that, you know, people who are very, very individual focused or individualistic focused, you should kind of avoid, uh, being interesting. Yeah.

Speaker C: And you. Useful interview, uh, interview tips for our Listeners. Um, and now looking ahead, uh, what is your vision? What does the company look like in 2030?

Speaker A: We have become the second largest recruiter. We want to be the first, uh, the largest recruiter for IFAs or MFTS rather. And uh, that is a, ah, very, very important thing that we are going to work on. Um, and so that uh, so this business has three levers of compounding. Right? So one existing IFA or a mfd. M Adding uh, more clients, same clients, adding more money and platform adding more MFDs. Right. So um, the first two are kind of uh, you know, are organic or kind of uh, you know, the existing client adding more money and um, existing IFA adding more clients. Right, that's more organic. Right. The third one is what we kind of have, have to do essentially. Right. So uh, that's where the, the becoming the largest recruiter for IFAs is one. So right, right from people who are already doing this business to people who want to come into this business and we want to make them successful. Both the strategies kind of go hand in hand. Um, so we want to reach to 50,000 MFTS, uh, by 2030 that in turn will uh, make sure that we will be uh, having about, about a lakh crore of AUM from uh, uh, 5000 crores now and which uh, which is what we are chasing in for, for the next five years.

Speaker C: Long road ahead, but certainly sounds like a very, very exciting journey. Um, but just the last question and why we call this, this Podcast Founders Unfiltered. What's one piece of unfiltered feedback you received that really impacted you personally or professionally?

Speaker A: Um, feedback I think, um, be more patient.

Speaker C: And who said this to you? Multiple people.

Speaker B: You heard it again and again.

Speaker A: Okay, so um, so that is something right from, right from my M. Morgan's job to couple of people in the company. Right. So be more patient. But uh, that's something that I have kind of tried to take on board. But yeah, that's, that's something that uh, you know, I've got feedback from multiple.

Speaker C: Nice, awesome Prashant, thank you so much for joining us. It really was a pleasure chatting.

Speaker A: Pleasure pleasure. Mazen and Avril, thank you. Thanks for your time.