Mukund Seshadri recently crossed the coveted Rs.1000 cr MF AuM milestone, with 93% equity assets, serving 600 families (3000 investors),with a service team of 7 and a support team of 3 people. He is also a long distance runner, a singer and a spiritually inclined devoted family man.
He left a good career in a prominent life insurance company to set up his MFD practice in 2005 from scratch – with zero clients – because he felt insurance products weren’t investor friendly.
From setting up canopies outside office buildings and handing out business cards to operating out of part of his father’s desk in his parents’ house, Mukund’s early days were tough. He kept at it with a simple daily motto: get at least 1 SIP today.
It took him 10 years of non-stop 7-day work weeks to get to an AuM of Rs.50 crs by 2015. Then, the proverbial J-curve of the hockey stick kicked in, to catapult his AuM from 50 cr to 1000 crs in the next 8 years.
The growth propellant started with the loss of a client in2015 and Mukund’s introspection on what caused this – which was service below expectations. He invested time and money in purchasing and customizing task manager and CRM software which enabled him to switch from reactive to proactive service. Since 2015, every client of MS Ventures is contacted at least once a month – without fail. Systems in place ensure top notch service delivery. Satisfied clients drove bountiful referrals, spurring growth beyond his imagination.
He focuses on mid to senior level executives – professionals who value professionalism. Most of his clients started as retail investors and have grown to mass affluent status over time.
From 2019, he started focusing on personal development – of mind, body and soul. He shed 40 kgs weight, became an avid long distance runner, took up meditation, focused more on spirituality and continued his passion of singing – morphing from a personal finance expert into a complete individual –a change that has made a profound difference to his perspectives and outlook, a change that endears him a whole lot more to clients and prospects.
Looking into the future, he continues to refrain from setting targets and his motto is still the same that catalyzed his exponential growth from 2015: service excellence. Margin compression is a way of life for MFDs he says – but the volume growth opportunity is so large for the next decade, that we don’t need to worry about margins – if we build systems, processes and service teams to manage growth. He is now investing in another round of tech upgrades to make his firm ready to serve hundreds more if not thousands more families in the years ahead.