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Vyana Wealth in association with Business Standard, hosted the first Vyana Investor Round Table at the ITC Sonar on 8th November 2013 in Kolkata. The event was partnered by Edelweiss, JP Morgan, Axis and ICICI Pru Mutual Fund. The event was attended by around 175 HNI and corporate clients, and was well appreciated by one and all. This was our first such event, and I think the success of this event has to do with the fact that we tried to create something different. Our event was titled "No Funny Business" - which itself aroused a lot of curiosity.
I am sharing this with my advisor friends for the simple reason that I think we can all collectively make a big difference to investor sentiment, if we take the effort to reach out to them differently, and communicate in a more interesting manner.
Abhenav Khettry, Vyana Wealth, making his introductory remarks
Being different works
How do you get investors to understand and appreciate a subject as technical as correlation between volatility and returns? Our speaker chose to explain this by showcasing Virendra Sehwag and Rahul Dravid - and ensured that clients understood the key message. How do you inspire clients to look beyond the immediate challenges of the macro environment and uncertainties around us, and to take a more positive stance on investing? Our speaker chose to showcase challenges and difficulties that people face and how they have overcome them. He took the example of four people, associated with sports, social service, films and mountaineering, who despite all the challenges that life threw at them, succeeded in overcoming them and achieving what few have. And, finally, how do you ensure that your clients go back home after the evening with a cheerful smile on their faces? We had a couple of stand up comedians who ensured this, with their fantastic performance.
A section of our audience for the event
Here is some feedback from some of my clients after the event :
I have attended several private banking meets in the past, but those have mostly been one way sessions, about their products and benefits. Today's meet dint talk about products, but more about solutions and innovations in investing. The Stand up comedians were the ACE in the pack and I thoroughly enjoyed the evening.
- a middle aged HNI investor, who has moved his complete relationship to us.
Thank you for connecting the investors with the AMC stalwarts, this was my first interaction and learnt a lot from their presentations.
- A retired 75 year old investor who had totally relied on his bankers, before moving his complete portfolio to us
I liked the lucid language and slides, which really helped us to connect the dots and understand why things happen in certain ways in the economy and markets.
- A middle aged lady, who manages her own portfolio and relies on our advice completely.
I liked the style and finesse of the evening along with a superbly executed concept with a brilliant climax of the comedians.
- A young investment banker who relies on us for his own investments.
These were some of the reactions from participating AMCs:
- An event at par with private bankers
- Haven't seen a better clientele in Calcutta for long
- The clientele was in fact better than most investor meets of Mumbai
- Never seen an IFA organized event of this scale and finesse along with publicity of Business Standard.
When clients are happy, what more can we ask for?
Details of the event
The format of the event was as follows :
1. Presentations
2. Panel Discussion
3. Q & A Session with audience
4. Stand Up Comedians
The speakers at the event were:
1. Mr Vikaas Sachdeva CEO Edelweiss
2. Mr Supreet Bhan, NSH - JP Morgan
3. Mr Karan Datta, NSH - Axis MF
4. Mr Aniruddha Chaudhuri - Head Emerging Business, ICICI Pru
5. Mr Seemant Shukla, NSH - Edelweiss
1st Speaker: Abhenav Khettry: I made the opening address sharing the growth of the company thanks to all its well wishers and clients. We have moved to 1300 clients and Rs 225 Cr of assets with branches in Mumbai and Jamshedpur apart From Kolkata. I outlined the advisory process that we follow along with the technology backup, to give a good mix of human and online interface to our clients. The advisory process emphasized upon the need identification and goal realization aspect as the products were not as important compared to the fulfilling one's investment objectives.
2nd Speaker: Supreet Bhan, Executive Director and National Sales Head for JP Morgan Asset Management. He explained the benefits of the global portfolio diversification, across assets and across Geographies with JP Morgan's international solutions. His presentation spoke in great detail of the implication of global factors on emerging market, be it debt or equities. He emphasized the need for equity in Indian portfolios as it was amongst the lowest globally.
3rd Speaker: Seemant Shukla, National Sales Head - Edelweiss Asset Management: Seemant highlighted the co-relation between volatility and returns, giving the example of Virender Sehwag and Rahul Dravid. That even though Sehwag achieved many milestones and fastest scores, but in terms of longevity and overall performance, Rahul Dravid was far ahead of him. He made the point, that India scored the highest in terms of volatility and that scared retail investors, as they prefer predictable returns. He iterated the offering of Edelweiss hedged and simple solutions like the Edelweiss Absolute Return Fund and Prepaid SIP.
4th Speaker: Aniruddha Chaudhuri, Head Emerging Business - ICICI Prudential Asset Management: Mr Chaudhuri spoke about the herd mentality of investors, and how money chases asset classes during different phases and cycles of the markets. He spoke about the benefits of staying invested for the long term and how their schemes over considerable periods of time had performed relative to their benchmarks. He emphasized on basics that investors should follow and not get disillusioned with market noise and volatility as that was the nature of equity markets.
5th Speaker: Karan Datta, National Sales Head - Axis Mutual Fund: Karan had a very different and innovative presentation. He spoke about challenges and difficulties that people face and how they have overcome them. He took the example of four people, associated with sports, social service, films and mountaineering, who despite all the challenges that life threw at them, succeeded in overcoming them and achieving what few have.
His presentation was a refreshingly different and the audience loved it, giving him the loudest applause of the evening.
The Panel Discussion consisted of:
Mr Vikaas Sachdeva, CEO Edelweiss, Mr Supreet Bhan ED of JP Morgan and Mr Karan Datta, NSH of Axis MF.
The panel was asked the following questions, which they answered brilliantly:
1. Despite the markets recovering to 21,000, most portfolios hadn't recovered, how long is long term and is making returns all about timing?
2. What impact will change in Governance have on the markets and sentiments
3. Why do FIIs look at Indian more favourably than we ourselves do?
4. What is a return, that investors should be satisfied with and should expect from Mutual Funds?
5. What should be a long term asset allocation of an investor?
As you can see, these were very generic questions, the panellists answered them very well and had satisfied the audience.
Supreet Bhan, Vikaas Sachdeva and Karan Datta answered client questions brilliantly
The panel was followed by the two stand up comedians of the group Kalkutta Komedians: Anirban Dasgupta and Vaibhav Sethia. They had the audience listening to every last word and their act was very well received, it had the audience in splits and gave a grand closure to the First Vyana Investor Round Table.
No Funny Business - is great for business!
For us, apart from putting a big smile on our clients faces and helping them understand the world of investments better, we also got to meet many prospects - friends of our existing clients who came along to our event - because it promised to be different - by enlightening and entertaining at the same time. We've already got good incremental business from our existing clients after the event. Doing things a little differently looks like a winning combination - for clients, for AMCs and for ourselves : its certainly No Funny Business!
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