Meet Mr. SHARAN C PATIL, Inspire India Financial Solutions Pvt Ltd., Bangalore.
Meet the man who set sail and made his mark within the shortest and toughest possible time - the last four years. Sharan Patil, the founder & CEO of Inspire India Financial Solutions Pvt. Ltd., is doing a pretty impressive work in Banglore and adjoining regions. What makes his work stand out is his client centric approach which is even reflected in his own business targets.
It gives us great pleasure in sharing our interview with the SIP Maharaja shortly after his fourth anniversary with NJ.
1. Please tell us something about yourself.
I am an Aircraft Maintenance Engineer and an MBA in Marketing and Finance. I come from a middle class agricultural family from Gulbarga. I began my career as a Trainee Engineer in Air-India. My passion in the financial field and circumstances made me to become an OTC Dealer where I used to manage huge portfolios of HNI clients in International Commodities Trading in global exchanges before I joined the industry in year 1900. I became a NJ Partner in year June 2010. Currently I am the CEO and MD of Inspire India Properties Limited and Inspire India Financial Solutions Private Limited, Bangalore & Belgaum.
2. What were circumstances and reasons that made you choose the career of financial advisory?
My Passion in the finance subject and my eagerness to educate everyone about the need for financial planning and investments to attain financial freedom in their lives, made me choose this career and dedicate my time to it. Probably not by choice I took up this noble profession but by Chance.
3. Tell us about more about your clients? Do you follow any client classifications and on what basis?
We have always put in untiring efforts in approaching the clients spread over geographically not only in Bangalore but to other parts of Karnataka too. We believe in one to one personal sitting with each client and evaluate their status and goals, which has been rightly acclaimed by our investors as "WEALTH CHECK-UP". With our expertise in financial planning we give the best advice possible and accumulate clients.
We are proud to have right now nearly 4,000 clients with an AUM of 35 Crores INR. Based on their investment structure and goals we segregate our clients into Platinum, Gold and Silver categories. Though we give equal importance and care to ALL clients; we take the portfolio management of Platinum and gold clients by top executives and periodical client interactions over business dinner are being carried out on monthly basis.
4. Tell me three things that you believe is most valued by your clients.
- Our nurturing and our care, efforts in managing their portfolios
- Our deep understanding their goals and giving suitable solutions and advice and
- Our analytical follow up to create maximum benefit are the three things we believe are most valued by our clients. We strongly believe and advocate "If you are good, it's your social and moral responsibility to become Rich"
5. Strong communications is today very important in our industry. Please tell us about your approach in same with Clients.
Our communications approach is multi-faceted. Let me start by quoting some specifics. We conduct regular paid workshops and training courses to enhance the financial literacy for minimum 6 times in a year with not less than 300 investors attending each course. We also conduct monthly in-house workshops for our clients on products, technical matters, etc.
As a general practice, our dedicated relationship managers make regular interactions with clients and share product updates & market info. We conduct investor dinner or lunch meet during weekends and have personal interactions with our entire staff on a monthly basis. On my client birthdays and anniversaries our executives make sure that they visit them personally with greetings and bouquets /gifts. Also I am writing regularly in the bi-monthly magazine “Business Guru” articles in Kannada language related to investments, directed at prospective and new investors. These articles have inspired many to park their money with us in various investments.
6. Tell us about any tough questions or challenges that clients have posed before you...
Very frankly, we do not have to face any tough problems. And there are two reasons for it. First, our practice of doing investor level detailed analysis of their financial conditions and goals and second, our clear approach in giving investment advice for long term basis only in their interest.
On the challenges, there are again two observations on redemptions front. First is that whenever market is in an uptrend and clients see good returns they prefer to redeem. Next, there are often unforeseen or urgent requirements that crop up and prompt redemption. We deal with the first problem by educating on long-term power of compounding story and projecting greater wealth creation. For the second problem, we try and communicate the importance of staying invested to achieve life goals & wealth creation targets, the importance of having patience and finally by suggesting them other possible ways to meet their emergency financial needs.
7. You have a very impressive SIP book close to Rs.60 lakhs with over 2,700 SIPs. What is your approach to promoting and building on SIP book?
We are very focused on SIP. We make our clients understand the necessity to increase the value of their savings for better future. We often give them plans on how to reduce their expenses and increase their savings in SIP. We also make them realize the comfort and easiness of investing small amounts as SIP and then making them visualise how small SIP’s grow into magnificent numbers through power of compounding.
Another approach is through the wealth check-up campaigns which we regularly do. Here we adopt a financial planning based approach with clients wherein we collect related info on financial status, income & expense flow and financial goals and then accordingly advise them on the SIP savings needed.
8. Do you have adopted any plans of promoting TADA & MARS in your clientèle?
Both are great innovative services that we feel greatly empowers us. We find them to be hassle free, time saving and easy to operate. There is definitely a lot of scope for these services in future. For TADA, right now we have planned to have all Platinum clients adopt this. We plan to expand this to other categories also in future because of its usage and advantages. For MARS, we have started creating goal based portfolios directed towards achieving those targets. Our target for MARS is 10 crores of AuM within one year.
9. What do you consider your best achievements thus far?
For the last 6 years we had been regular recipients from NJ of SIP Maharaja Award, National level achievers for highest Net sales, awards for highest accumulation of clients, Emerging star awards. Also we had received the Best Business Practice award from Motilal Oswal Securities. I also have the unique honour of receiving the prestigious "Karnataka Rajyotsava award".
10. Please share some of key lessons you have learnt in your in rich experience..
The experience has taught me many things. The most import lessons are related to client management. Our Investors have to be taken the maximum care through innovative ways & tools of client relationship management. Next, we have to reduce the risky investments and aim for safer returns while planning for investors. Lastly, only patience and waiting with a long term horizon will definitely benefit the investors, the maximum way.
11. Going ahead what are your targets for 2015 and beyond?
We have made our long term plans investor centric. On a long term horizon, we plan and aim to make our investors with 10 lakhs portfolio to realize 100 crores in 25 years. On a 5 year horizon, our plans are to increase the count of investors with 10 Lakh portfolio to 1,000 in 5 years.
12. Any advice to fellow NJ Partners?
I just have to say that our caring approach to our clients, coupled with best financial advisories will keep our clients always with us. Our growth should be built up only on our clients growth.
13. Do you have any specific suggestions /feedback for improvement to NJ?
We really appreciate the innovative steps and measures taken by NJ which are of superb standards from the point of implementation and are highly result oriented and clients friendly. We strongly believe that because of the immense support and inspirations given by NJ, we are able to be now where we are. Our growth with NJ are going to be boundless and without any limits. We strongly hope for a very bright future for our clients, for us and NJ because of our mutual trust and understanding.
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