Sudip Bandyopadhyay’s Blog

When the British Tea Companies introduced tea for the first time in India, they used to put up stalls at public places and provide the hot beverage free of cost.  The purpose was to acquaint Indians with the taste of tea and hence an elaborate attempt was made to ensure that every middle class Indian got the taste of tea free of cost. Today tea  in India is a multi billion dollar industry . Similarly, the late 1990’s saw a communication revolution take place in the country, with Reliance Communications making the mobile phone a ubiquitous device within the reach of the common man.  Mobile telephone services had been prevalent in the country for a number of years, but taking it to the masses was the problem. Reliance led the way for the Telcom revolution in India.

To introduce a concept not widely popular is a huge challenge and the success of such a gamble depends on, apart from the quality of the product/ service, the efforts taken to popularize and market the concept with the ability to take it to the grass root level; especially in a country like ours where 70 per cent of its population still lives in rural and semi-urban areas.

Indian Financial markets are ripe for change. 34 per cent of our GDP gets saved.  However, out of these savings nearly 55 per cent sits in bank deposits.  Equity investment merely constitutes 4 per cent of these savings with only 9 million depository accounts in a country with a population of 1 billion.  What needs to be realized is that, long term wealth generation can only happen through investments in equity either direct or indirect both for individuals and the economy as a whole.  Hence, the need for a change in the way the financial landscape in India is of huge significance in our path to becoming a developed economy.

Reliance Money for the first time in the history of Indian financial markets tried to take the culture of Equity Investment beyond the metros and mini-metros of the country to the smallest of tehsils/ talukas.  To popularize Equity Investments, Reliance Money took the franchisee route by partnering with local youth in thousands of  tehsils, providing them with the requisite products knowledge and tools.  It introduced various innovative services such as the flat fee structure wherein an investor has to only pay a small fee of Rs. 500/- per year for a turnover of upto Rs. 5 lakh.  It also provided customers the option to trade through our branches/ franchisors or to call & trade or trade online or via the mobile both in equities and commodities.  Going one step further, Reliance Money also enabled customers to access value added services such as financial news, views and research on a 24 x 7 basis, chatting facility with experts, access to technical charts on its portal, online access to Mutual Fund Investment and redemption etc; at a price which in effect works out to less than Rs. 42 per month making it affordable and accessible.

We also realized that the culture of structured investments cannot spread unless there is large scale awareness about investments and the various options available today due to large scale product innovations that have happened over the last couple of years. Generally financial services companies spend huge amounts of money for print & television advertisements for establishing brand & selling their products.We took efforts  to educate the masses through cost effective investor awareness seminars across the length and breadth of the country, for a fraction of the cost.In the process our brand was established & we created a strong pro investor image.We strongly believe that the potential of the financial services sector is huge and cost effective efficient services need to be introduced to widen the customer base and realize the full potential of the India growth story. This is not a task for a corporation with a  short term business view, but for Companies with long term business plan & desire to lead from the front.