Rahul Roy Chowdhury, CEO of Geojit Private Wealth, reckons that the kind of money India would get in the next few years is going to be much larger than most of the global economies and the country with a strong and well-regulated environment will be able to garner more investments from both local and global investors.
“Wealth management, as a concept, is emerging and growing. With the economy expanding by around $3 trillion every 4-5 years, it will only increase the number of millionaires here,’’ he said, adding that migration of UHNW to UAE or Singapore will not have much impact on the wealth management industry of India.
India has a strong start-up culture now and some of them have proven to have grown much bigger in size. “This in a way would keep adding more millionaires with every additional trillion-dollar expansion the economy would witness. A large part of these millionaires will be focused on India and invest in India,” Chowdhury said.
How have the regulatory changes affected the wealth management services?
The Indian regulatory landscape has certainly evolved positively in the last decade, and that has brought a lot of governance to support the quality of desired growth. Rightly regulated but not overly regulated environment is beneficial for wealth management.
The mutual fund AUM has grown from ₹1-lakh crore in 2005 to around ₹65-lakh crore in July 2024. When the growth shows such a significant upward trajectory, the regulator is expected to increase the compliances for wealth managers.
Indian markets have outperformed global and emerging markets. How have Indian markets been able to navigate all the challenges compared to global markets?
Our domestic markets are witnessing an equity cult and the financialisation of the economy is playing a huge role in it. The demat accounts have recently hit an all-time high of 16 crore-plus and counting.
SIP, as an investment instrument, has now become a default option for most investors especially from the B30 cities. This will only increase with the economy witnessing higher expansion. If the per capita income goes up and touches $3,500 to $4,000 (going by estimates), there will be more investment surplus in the hands of investors which will keep the liquidity flowing.
On the strategy to grow Geojit Private Wealth business in this competitive market?
Private Wealth as a business is poised in a very unique way. In India, earlier wealth management services were offered largely by banks. With increased focus on CASA deposits now by banks, it has created a white space for high-quality wealth management business. This opens up scope for entities like Geojit, who have been there for nearly 3.5 decades, already doing that kind of quality work. We would want to start from that opportunity which is in front of us. We already have a set of HNI clients who would be offered Private Wealth services.
Given the growth in the wealth management business we will be looking at industry plus kind of growth rates. We would like to operate in the ₹5 crore to ₹50 crore-plus net worth category.
With a stronghold in the South, how do you assess the southern market in terms of its potential for HNIs, UHNIs, Family Offices & affluent Indians as your clients?
Historically, people in the South have an affinity to real estate and gold but in the last few years they have shifted to other financial assets. Over the last 37 years, Geojit has been acquiring clients and servicing them from a broking platform point of view. With the concept of Geojit ONE, we will be offering Private Wealth services to our large clients.
As far as Kerala is concerned Kochi, Thiruvananthapuram and Kozhikode might be the hubs. Since we also have a large presence in the nearby cities and States, all tier-2 and tier-3 cities are also important to us from our growth point of view.