Interview with Abhijit Bhave, Managing Director and CEO, Equirus Wealth

Radhakrishnan Chonat: Good day, ladies and gentlemen. Today, I’m happy to bring in a new series as part of AlphaStreet India’s podcast series. We are calling it CEO Insights, delving into the minds of business leaders, where we engage with visionaries and trailblazers who are shaping the future of industries.

In this series, I look forward to explore the strategies, challenges and successes of CEOs who are leading their organizations to new heights. And in my very, very first episode of this series, I’m honored to have with us Mr. Abhijit Bhave, the Managing Director and CEO of Equirus Wealth.

Now, with a distinguished career spanning over 25 years, Mr. Bhave has been at the forefront of wealth management in India and internationally. He has had a remarkable track record of establishing and scaling wealth management ventures. And he has worked in prominent institutions like Deutsche Bank, HSBC, ICICI Bank, and Karvy Private Wealth before this.

Now, as a thought leader, Mr. Bhave has consistently driven strategic visions, with a client-centric approach, where he has created value and he has achieved sustained success as well. In his previous role, he has been instrumental in growing the Fisdom Private Wealth as its CEO, expanding its reach in emerging markets and enhancing its brand as a trusted client partner.

Now, in his role as the CEO of Equirus Wealth, he continues to be a pioneer in the wealth management space, focusing on innovative solutions and client successes. With that intro, join us as we delve into the insights and experiences of Mr. Abhijit Bhave. Let’s explore his insights on the evolving landscape called wealth management or wealth-tech and the opportunities that India presents itself.

Mr. Abhijit, welcome to the CEO Insight Series.

 

Abhijit Bhave: Thank you so much for the opportunity. I’ve been following AlphaStreet and I love the platform. I’ve had some good learning experiences, watching some exciting people giving interviews and talks on your channel. So, thank you so much.

Radhakrishnan Chonat: Excellent. We’ll begin, Mr. Abhijit, with your journey. You’ve been a career banker before and then you transitioned yourself to the new wealth management or wealth-tech industry, as we call it, hitherto unheard in India. Please walk us through this exciting journey and how has been the transition?

Abhijit Bhave: So, actually, see, I am a mechanical engineer. So I’m a BE Mechanical, and I’ve started working in 1993 as an engineer in a refinery. I remember, I used to wear a brown boiler suit and wash my hands with petrol. It is called — with naphtha, actually. Then I had this rich uncle and he has had a lot of influence on my life, Dr. Diwakar Gorhe and he told me that do an MBA, you will get more money for less work.

So, that sounded smart. So, I did MBA from IIM Lucknow. And after that, in 1996, I joined the mutual fund industry and that for me was a big eye opener. So, I joined Unit Trust of India. And, at that time, they were managing as much as 60,000 crores of assets under management. And I had dreams of becoming a fund manager, but once I went there, I realized that a lot needed to be done on convincing clients to enter the equity market.

So, I actually moved to marketing, and interestingly, at the age of 24, in 1996, I handed my first check of 100 crores. Imagine, I used to travel second class in the train and having the check in the pocket of 100 crores and at that time, we had high value clearing. I had to hit high value clearing. So it was really an exciting place to be.

From there, I moved to corporate banking and cash management and that’s where I entered banking. I joined ICICI Bank and I had the privilege of being the RM for Hindustan Lever which was a great experience. But money is also attraction and foreign banks were giving a lot of money and a lot of career growth. So, in 2000, I joined HSBC and I moved to retail banking. At the age of 28, I was a branch manager. And at that time, I remember — and two years after that, I had made a presentation saying that branch manager is the CEO of a branch.

At that time, I didn’t know that I will end up being a CEO someday. But from there, I moved to Delhi for five years and then I moved into wealth management. So I was Regional Head of Wealth for North India, National Head Wealth. And I moved to Deutsche Bank as India Head for Private Banking. Then I was very fortunate, I got an opportunity to work in Vietnam. So, I was posted to Vietnam on a secondment, to start up wealth management for a local investee bank.

Then I came back and then I remained in wealth management, private banking. I joined as the CEO of Karvy Private Wealth in 2015. Then I went into a fintech startup where we started the wealth tech platform called Fisdom Private Wealth. I was there for two years and I joined Equirus around 14 months back.

 

Radhakrishnan Chonat: Excellent. Excellent. Wow, what a journey it has been from handling naphtha to handling green boogies.

Abhijit Bhave: Moving from cutting chai to black coffee.

Radhakrishnan Chonat: Excellent. Excellent anecdote. Sticking to the same thing, you mentioned that getting that first 100 crore cheque was one of the highs in your career. So before that you’re dealing with HNIs, UHNIs and people who have wealth, right, and that also carries a lot of egos, let’s put it this way, right, to be convinced that, you can take care of his hard-earned wealth and we are looking at a spectrum that is not necessarily the retail traders who get nervous at fall and all that. What kind of profiles or what are some good experiences you have had? We are talking about equities now which everybody is interested in, but India is still predominantly gold, real estate market and what has been some of the good stories that you can share with us?

 

Abhijit Bhave: I actually have a slight difference of opinion. 80% to 85% of the ultra HNI clients that I have met are very humble because they have worked hard in life, they have seen ups and downs and they have seen failures and they value money and they value people. So unless — I actually sometimes believe that I have wealth managers in my team having more chip on their shoulder than the customers.

So, it’s only 10% to 15% people, typically the second or third generation who have had easy cash and easy wealth who have big egos. But otherwise I have seen majority of people who are humble and when I started meeting them at a young age, I think 25, they also kind of inspired me and they saw in me or people like me their own younger side.

So, they were actually more helpful in terms of advising. But yes, see, you do find people who are having some arrogance, but I think that goes with the wealth. So what I do is, before I enter any client meeting, I take my ego, put it my pocket, put the smile on my face and meet the customer.

 

Radhakrishnan Chonat: Excellent. We are — India, as an economy, we are in a transition phase per se. That’s what the market also is calling in where from traditional avenues of saving, we are moving to new age, what is called wealth management. For my audience, which — it’s a very broad audience, we have youngsters to CEOs listening to this. If I were to ask you to define what is wealth management, what would be the two or three lines for us to understand wealth management?

 

Abhijit Bhave: Okay. I’ve seen your past podcasts, RC, and you ask questions about books and I love reading and I recommend people — to people that they should read a lot. So, in our business, we can complicate things. In our business, we can talk of so many things and I’m sure you have people who come and give you a slew of numbers. So, I will not talk about numbers. Anytime when I meet a client who is investing money, I go to him with a simple question and that’s a very nice book by Simon Sinek. It’s called “Start with Why.”

So when you meet — see, we don’t create wealth. Understand this, wealth management is a secondary industry. Clients have already created wealth. We will manage their wealth. We will grow their wealth. At worst, we will destroy their wealth. So the way I have told myself and I’ve been leading teams for the last, I don’t know, 24 years possibly. I’ve always told people that, you know take a helicopter view.

In wealth management, what is my role? My role is to be a friend, philosopher, guide, a partner, a big brother, a gym coach kind of a person to my customer, to my investor. Hold his or her hand and walk with him or her on this path of life and help them achieve their dreams and goals. So, when I put myself in that position, then automatically my thinking does not revolve around products or returns or revenues.

I see myself as a partner with the client for the next 10, 20, 30 years. I want to walk with him, maybe also help in parts of wealth creation, but ensure that we preserve capital, we give returns, we do asset allocation, we do investments in physical assets, financial assets, but basically go with the goal.

So, when a client comes here who is already wealthy, he has made money and a businessman would get a return which is 20%, 30%. So, it’s not about the return. So it’s all about trying to see what we can do to complement, to identify the latent needs, to complement the strengths of the client and take him forward. So, on this particular point about physical assets, you’ll have a lot of people who will give you data and I’ve seen it myself that money has been moving from physical assets to financial assets.

But, in India, that trend will still continue for some time. So, financialization of savings is increasing, but huge amounts of money are still in physical assets. So there’s nothing wrong in that. The real estate cycle is back. People can invest in real estate. People can invest in gold. And people can invest in financial assets. But the role is this, the role is to help our clients achieve their dreams and goals. That is what I would say.

Radhakrishnan Chonat: Excellent. Excellent. So, right from engaging with the client, you said, you take off that ego and with a plaster in your mouth, you go and engage with the client. Now, the client engagement happens. And then the next part is the retention. So, you mentioned about 20 to 30 years or probably more journey. So, as a client, what is it that I expect from you post — let’s say, I know I have been part of your PMS, I’ve given you my first check of 50 lakhs. So, can you walk us through Equirus Wealth’s or your strategy of client retention and engagement post onboarding?

Abhijit Bhave: Yeah. It’s very important that you follow the manufacturing principle of after sales service. So, one is that you convince the — see, it’s all based on trust. And trust is more subjective than objective. In financial markets, there’s nothing tangible that I give, right? I don’t sell a pen or a car. I am actually trying to sell trust. Even in financial services when we go with a credit card or we go with a loan, there’s something that the client is getting. But for a client to cut a check or do a RTGS of 50 lakhs requires a lot of trust building. So that is important.

But as I said, in manufacturing, we have after sales service. So, it’s the entire journey of pre sales, sales, post sales from our perspective, but from the client’s perspective, it’s more of a client experience. So, over a period of time, I’ve realized and I’ve actually put it down into a framework of four E’s of client experience.

So first E is Ease. How easy is it? You mentioned PMS, RC. PMS application form requires 30 to 50 signatures. So that’s stupid, right? I’m not taking a loan, I’m investing money. So now, thankfully, technologies and infrastructure has come in. So we have a possibility of online onboarding of a client, and with one wet signature. So the entire ease of experience using people who know how to take forward the customer’s investments and obviously use of technology, digitization, that ease is important.

Second E is Exposure. As you rightly said about physical assets, financial assets, but even in financial assets, in my very first job, and this is something I have been telling people for the last, whatever, many years. Any investment has three vectors. If you do a X, Y, and Z axis, and just say S, L, R. S for Safety, L for Liquidity, R for Returns. The higher the return you want, you’ll have to compromise on safety or you have to compromise on liquidity, or both.

So the exposure is in terms of the asset class, how much risky asset class I’m taking? So how much equity, how much debt, how much gold? Within equity, how much large cap, how much small cap, how much micro-cap, how much sectoral? Within debt, how much long term, short term?

So that exposure now is very important, you know, there’s a saying in Hindi that, “Ki agar aapka mooh dhood se jal gaya, to aap chaaz bhi phook, phook pe pite ho.” So, unfortunately, a lot of my brethren have done some — actually, a lot of mis-selling, and people have lost a lot of money over the period of last two decades, because they haven’t really been explained the risks, and the liquidity issues that some investments might face. That’s why second E is for exposure.

Third E is Education. Even if the client is an ultra HNI, I think it’s important for the client to get involved in understanding what he or she is doing. So, obviously, at the lower end or a younger end, you explain simple stuff about mutual funds and everything. At a higher end, you explain stuff about, international allocation or structuring or derivatives, that kind of stuff.

So I always do something simple. I always carry a piece of paper and pen. And I explain the thing to people in writing. We have been taught about this simple acronym called KISS, K-I-S-S, which stands for “Keep It Simple Stupid”. So, as long as you keep it simple, and you educate client, I think it’s important.

And the last E is the basic E, which is Earning. How much is the client earning post all the fees, post all taxes and post inflation? That is important. And I’ll just tell you one more thing. I am an MBA in marketing also. And in marketing, there is this very nice term which not many people use. It’s called post purchase dissonance, which means that today, if I go and buy a suit, expensive suit, I might start thinking did I buy it? Is it right or wrong? So that dissonance happens.

Similarly, if somebody is investing a large amount, say a few crores in a particular investment product, he or she will think there’s dissonance. So you go back to the client after some time, explain to him that, this is how it is performed. And the best way, and it is a marketing technique, the best way to kill dissonance is to get the client to refer another client in the same product.

So, as long as the client sees that there is tangible incremental value, the client sees that there is genuine effort in understanding his needs. And the client sees sincerity of approach of putting the client before us. I think the journey with the client is rewarding, and it’s a win-win.

 

Radhakrishnan Chonat: Beautifully explained the four E’s. Shifting gears a little bit. We talked about the UHNIs, HNIs. I have a lot of young audiences who are young professionals earning pretty well, but haven’t started the investing journey yet. Probably they have bought their new car and they are going through the PPD that you just mentioned. For such an audience, you do — in Equirus Wealth, you do mutual fund advice and stuff. Walk us through what is a typical demograph that you see from a young professional and what is it that they need to do now at their early 20s or probably late 20s, early 30s. What sort of an advice from a wealth management perspective would you give them?

Abhijit Bhave: For me, financial planning is more of a passion. And you may not know this, for many years, I’ve been actually taking workshops on investor education. And I think it’s important. My son today is 16 and I’ve already kind of tried to put that discipline in him. But the primary thing, everybody says this, start young, invest regularly and keep on holding for a long time. But it’s easier said than done because when you are entering into a career and you are getting money, you also want to spend that money. That is also important.

So the first thing I would tell people is read a book called “Rich Dad Poor Dad.” And that book is something. First thing the book says is that if you want to be rich, do a business. Because in business, you get income, you spend, your show expenses, then whatever is left, you pay tax. I am salaried, I get income, I pay tax, and then whatever is remaining I spend. So that’s something very basic. So if you see any demographics in wealth management, you will see 80% people being self-employed or businessmen, except for technocrats in parts like Bangalore or Pune or Gurgaon. So that’s one thing.

If you’re going to be — if you have an objective to be rich, try to become an entrepreneur. That’s the first point. Or you can become a CEO, that also helps. But — that was on a lighter note. But when you are young and when you’re starting, I think what Rich Dad Poor Dad also says is this, you have income and you will spend money and you’ll have some savings. But what you should try and do is have a second source of income through those savings. So what you do is, for example, how do you do that? You keep money in a fixed deposit, you get interest; you put money to buy a property, you get rent; or you put money in equity, you get dividend.

So, I would say that when you are young, whatever you can save, put only in equity, only in equity at this point of time. And the typical formula there, but one would say at that age, try to save at least 20%, 30% and don’t save, invest. And simple thing, even if you start by investing 10,000 rupees, 20,000 rupees, 50,000 rupees over a period of time, it will keep on multiplying and it will keep on growing.

What you start with — a lot of times the mistakes people do, including me is, we will start by putting our money straight away into stocks or derivatives, futures, options or cryptocurrencies. Don’t do that. I would say first start with mutual funds, start with the index fund. And then as you keep on studying more, then you go into blue chip stocks.

But I think the simple thing is, save a bit of money, maybe 20%, 30%, but also live in the moment. You should not be kind of saving everything and not enjoying life. So also enjoy life. But do get involved, do meet people, listen to podcasts, follow some websites like Money Control or read some newspapers like the ET Wealth and they will tell you a lot of things that you should do.

Second and very important, a lot of people don’t understand this fully well, but I would also say that when you’re starting young, please do buy life insurance, please do buy health insurance because unfortunately, Radhakrishnan, I’ve had in various organizations in my team, very, very unfortunate, young colleagues dying at the age of 25, 26. They were in financial services, but something happened unfortunately or accident happened and they didn’t have a life insurance. So their parents suffered or their spouses suffered. So that is the other thing I’ll talk about, you know, save. Spend, save, invest, insure, that’s what I would say.

Radhakrishnan Chonat: Spend, save, invest, insure. Excellent.

Abhijit Bhave: So as they say, mutual fund sahi hai, but insurance zaroori hai.

Radhakrishnan Chonat: Zaroori hai. Wow, nice. I’m going to use that as a title for this. Now shifting gears a little bit and talking about your leadership style. In the financial services industry and a lot of youngsters are looking forward to join the investment management or the wealth management landscape and you have built multiple teams from ground up. So, what are sort of the core leadership values that you believe in and follow? And what sort of an advice would you give to an aspiring young professional looking to enter this industry and the future about this industry?

Abhijit Bhave: Okay. So, two things. One is the industry part of it. And second is the individual part of it. So, I believe that this is going to be the best decade of our lives in terms of wealth creation and in terms of opportunities in India. The best decade of our lives, God willing, God willing. Already, I think outside of the U.S., India is the biggest — the best bull market happening in the equity markets. And there are various levers, like you know about it. In school, we used to write an essay called “Indian Population Boon or Bane.” And today that is a boon because we have whatever 65% people below the age of 35.

So, we have employment. We have investment coming in. We have foreign investment coming in. We have entrepreneurs creating wealth. We have the big SIP book. So, it is going to be a very nice upward journey for the next 10 years. So, it’s also a good time to have careers there. So, whether you are an economics graduate or you are a chartered accountant, you are a MBA, you are a CFA, this is a good industry to be in because now — earlier we used to have relationship managers, but now it is wealth managers. People put — investors put a premium on knowledge and skills. So, I think if you want to make — get the satisfaction of making money for others and also make money for yourself, this is the right industry to be.

And, I’ll just say two things here. One is, when you meet doctors, unfortunately, you see some doctors who are smoking. They know it’s bad for health. You see some doctors who are overweight, but that’s how it is. They don’t follow the advice that they give to others for themselves because they’re too busy serving their patients. Similarly in wealth management, when I meet rich people, I should not be — I should not be poor myself. So I will also have to earn money. So, the slogan would be, “Client kamaye, ham bhi kamaye.” So that way, it’s a great industry to be in.

If you are looking at what are the characteristics, I would tell any new person who starts a career to read this book called “The Habit of Winning” by Prakash Iyer. It’s a very nice book. And there have been a lot of debates on 70 hours of work week, 100 hours of work week and all that stuff. It’s a very individual choice, but I believe that when you are young, you actually have a lot of time at hand and now we talk of work life balance, but maybe if you just work hard for the first five, 10 years of your career, the work life balance automatically comes.

So, hard work, all that stuff is standard. So I’ll not talk about it. But I’ll give you a framework again, in terms of four values, which I believe are important. I-P-O-D, IPOD, okay, they’re easy to remember. I is for Integrity, and especially in our industry, we have seen reputation disappearing like this. It can be a wrong advice given to a customer. It can be a wrong step where you’re trying to get something for your personal gain. And after so many years, I have got an absolutely clear conscience, because if — one mistake and the entire industry and customers come to know about it. So, integrity is something which is non-negotiable.

And there is a simple test, you must have heard of this test called the mama test or mother’s test. If I am doing something and if my mother sees me doing that and she will say it’s wrong, it’s wrong, simple. So integrity, I for Integrity.

Second is, P for Positivity. There’s — this is a world where a lot of people are so negative, they keep on criticizing and they keep on complaining and they keep on blaming. As a youngster, we start with a lot of positivity. And then, as we keep on growing up, we keep on adjusting ourselves and downgrading our ambitions, because there are lot of people around us who kind of take us down.

So, I think that is something that has to be shining out. And, it’s said that you are the average of the five people with whom you spend your maximum time with. So spend time with people who are — or even spend time online. There’s this very nice RJ called RJ Kartik and I follow him and he’s got his tagline saying that, “Kar dikhao kuch aisa ki duniya banna chaahe tum jaisa.” So I think even that, watching talks which are positive, I think you should remain positive.

O, I’m actually missing out on O, but let me come back to O. D is Dependability, okay. D is dependability, because what happens is that whenever I’m working in the corporate world and I keep on growing the organization ladder, my line manager needs to know that if I say something to this particular person, it gets done. And that’s how you keep on going up. You don’t need to get reminders all the time.

And if you want to become a, what should I say, a more successful person and keep on going up one level, that means you have to become more and more dispensable at the lower level, which means that I do my work in such a short period of time, automatically I’m ready for the next level.

In leadership, for example, sometimes, RC, people say that, I was on leave for two weeks and my entire team lost it and the work did not happen. But “Hey stupid man, it was you who did not develop your team.” So, that way, I think it’s important to do that — have that dependability to grow in your career. Yeah.

Radhakrishnan Chonat: Wonderful. Wonderful. Sticking to the wealth management industry, we are talking also about wealth-tech evolving in India.

Abhijit Bhave: I just remembered. Sorry, I just remembered. O for Ownership.

Radhakrishnan Chonat: Yes, O. O for Ownership, yeah.

Abhijit Bhave: O for Ownership, because when I — nowadays, I think it’s important. So I’ll just spend two minutes on that. Because, if you talk of wealth creation, today, a lot of organizations give you opportunity of having stock options. So, when I said in the beginning that one should have its own business, here you are actually getting the peace of having your monthly salary along with stock options. So, if you behave like the promoter or the entrepreneur, you will automatically maximize revenues, cut costs, ensure clients are happy, ensure staff is happy. So I for Integrity, P for Positivity, O for Ownership, D for Dependability.

Radhakrishnan Chonat: Excellent. That’s a great framework for any youngster listening to this IPOD. Wonderful. Sticking to — Abhijit ji, sticking to the wealth-tech industry, the evolution we have seen, I have come across examples in the U.S., we had a startup called Acorns and Betterment, where you have some chiller change in your account, it automatically gets transferred to investing account with Robinhood and stuff. Such innovations, are they happening in India? And is that the way to address the other half, which is the Bharat, which is like probably the 95% of the unaddressed market from a wealth management perspective? What are your thoughts on that?

 

Abhijit Bhave: So, this can actually go into a one hour answer. Because I have a lot of thoughts on that, but I will try to kind of compartmentalize it, okay. Let’s talk of Bharat first. I have been very, very fortunate that I’ve also got to travel a lot across the country and into tier-two and tier-three cities. And once I was going somewhere and I was talking to the driver and the driver had his smartphone and I said, “What do you do on the smartphone?” So he said, “I do Dream 11. I do options trading and I do crypto training.”

Now there is a negative to a lot of this technology, right? Besides just spending their time watching insta reels, they’re also kind of getting affected by this particular technology as a bane. So that was more on a specific example, but yes. Now India is a very complicated, huge country, okay. Europe has so many countries and India is one country, which has got multiple countries inside them.

So it is not very easy to have a one solution for everybody. Similarly, even, for example, when I go to even a larger city, a Chennai, a Bangalore, a Kolkata, Mumbai, obviously, or a Pune or even a Guwahati where I recently went, there are different cultures, different value systems. And I should tell you this, I kept this for you, this book called “Psychology of Money.” Okay.

This book tells you that the investor behavior is actually a function of the value system, my upbringing and my surroundings. So, it can’t be one size fits all. Now coming back to technology and stuff like a lot of people talk about robo-advisory and all that stuff. So I’ll again give — go back to a doctor’s example. If I’ve got 100 fever, I will, and maybe having body ache, I’ll do nothing, but maybe some of us will just prop up paracetamol and go back to work. If I’ve got 103.5 fever and I have throat pain and I’m feeling giddy and I’m shivering, I’ll go to a doctor, correct?

So, similarly, if I have got less amount of money and I have some time, I can actually do a DIY, do-it-yourself. So, that’s where your technology and your robo-advisory and everything will come in. But if I have more money and I don’t enjoy this. I enjoy doing something else. I am maybe doing a tech job. I love coding or I’m working in the pharma industry, I love research. Then I will need the expert. So — and the last thing is, the nature of product, the nature of investment.

If I’m just buying an index fund, if I’m buying blue chip stocks, yeah, there are dime a dozen apps. And I use — I myself work in a fintech startup. It was a very exciting thing. The average age was half my age, but it was very interesting. Even in Equirus Wealth, by the way, we have a software team of 20 highly inspired crack engineers from IITs and they’re doing a lot of work on creating a really good client experience and what we call UI, UX user experience, user interface, user journey, UJ. So that is one part of it.

So, some part of India, some part of Bharat will do the right investments using technology. Some of them will unfortunately go wrong. And I’m very happy SEBI is now coming very strongly on options trading because 99% of the people lose money. Some people will need advice. If I do a pyramid of investments, a large base will do it digitally. So, I just give you some data. I said, I’ll not give you data, but I’ll just give you some data. There are more than 20 crore investors today who are having some kind of financial assets. And these are like people who are 10,000 and above. And at that lower end, you will obviously do it through app. It’s quite easy.

You go slightly up where you have mutual funds and fixed deposits and bonds. It can be a phygital model, part digital on the phone, part RM. But as you go beyond that, you will need that expert to come and meet you. And people will do some part digitally, some part physically. But full a robo-advisory working for India, I don’t see that happening in the near future. But use of technology, use of AI in quant models, that’s already happening. Use of AI technology in better customer experience, already happening.

Radhakrishnan Chonat: Wonderful insight. So you mentioned about — Abhijit ji, you mentioned about the role of regulators in India in setting up the whole financial landscape, financial services landscape right from mutual funds, and recently there are lot of updates on F&O ban and regularization of investment advisors and stuff. CFP as a profession is very well known in the Western world. Whereas when it comes to India, it’s still largely tier-one city driven. What sort of a vision you have as the CEO of Equirus Wealth in terms of addressing the large diverse culturally different base, as you said, India probably we can call it United States of India, it’s multiple different cultures. So what sort of is your vision or a wish list if I were to ask you?

 

Abhijit Bhave: So, first of all, before talking about regulators, let me talk about Equirus Wealth, so you get the perspective. So, Equirus is a 17 year old organization. And as we discussed earlier, we recently had our anniversary event that happened in Mumbai. And a lot of successful people came there because we have been an investment bank. And we have unlocked a lot of wealth for hardworking entrepreneurs through private equity investments, through debt investments, and now through a lot of IPOs. Equirus Capital does that.

Equirus Securities is actually an institutional broking firm where we do research for mutual funds, insurance companies, and we do study of 250 stocks. Equirus Wealth was an offshoot that happened six, seven years back, where we said now we can also use that research to help customers. So, now today, as we stand Equirus Wealth is in four parts. We have Equirus Wealth Distribution, where we meet customers, we suggest them investment choices that they can look at.

Second is Equirus Asset Management, where we manufacture our own products. So we have Equirus PMS, we have Equirus GIFT City Fund, we have Equirus Alternative Investment Fund.

Third is Equirus Wealth HNI Broking, which is not trading, which is not derivatives, which is hardcore investments, where we tell customers what stock to buy and hold. And the fourth part is Digital Wealth, where coming to what you mentioned, the future is digital, and that’s why we are having that part of the team.

Now coming to your question about what is the wish list for regulators and what, as a business, we want to look at? One really good thing about SEBI I have seen over the last 20 years is that SEBI is extremely customer focused. They don’t see that distributor will suffer. They say that if the customer is better off, distributors will be better off. So, I will tell you, I’ve seen this journey, there was my namesake, Mr. C. B. Bhave, who as a Chairman of SEBI banned entry loads in mutual funds. And at that time, China had 5% entry loads.

And I remember I had gone — I think I had gone to Coimbatore and I was addressing a IFA summit and they said, “Oh, no, we are dead. How will you do business?” But business happened and the industry grew. So, I think globally SEBI is known to be a very strong regulator. And I think that is how it should be. So my wish list is just simple wish list that do as much as you can for the investor’s benefit.

Now coming to Equirus Wealth, in terms of our footprint, we have been discussing India and Bharat for the last few minutes. I think this is what we’re looking at, Bombay, Delhi, Bangalore, there are a lot of choices customers have. But we want to go by using digital Figitel model to tier-two and tier-three cities. And two weeks back, I went to Shillong. It was a 3.5 hour flight from Mumbai to Guwahati and a 3.5 hour drive from there. And I met some really great investors who have a lot of money. And they were really, what should I say, they were really happy that somebody can come there and talk to them.

So my next trip is going to be Dimapur. I want to go there and meet some investors there. So, our idea is that, as I told you, our vision is to help our clients achieve their dreams and goals. The objective is to go wide, go into tier-two and tier-three cities, meet customers and with only one objective, give Alpha to the customer.

 

Radhakrishnan Chonat: Perfect, perfect. Give Alpha to the customer. What a way to know summarize and thank you for giving us a very good overview of what Equirus is all about as an organization, though we were talking about Equirus Wealth. Few principles as a CEO, I think before the interview, we were just catching up and you had mentioned that you have a lot of acronyms for CEO. So we are all ears to hear about your thoughts about what a CEO is and what CEO role is.

Abhijit Bhave: So, it sounds like a very, very glamorous role from outside, but it is a very, very high stress role, that I can tell you. Because if you look at the Venn diagram, a simple Venn diagram of stakeholders, there are multiple stakeholders, regulators and lot of stuff, but the three key stakeholders are your customers, your employees and your shareholders. So, one has to achieve a win-win-win. One has to make money for clients in our business. One has to make them in such a way that they get an alpha over what — compared to what risk they are taking. They have a very, very good customer experience and they enjoy doing wealth management with us.

You do it in such a way that people are motivated. People enjoy working with you. People get not just money, but they feel they are valued by the organization and shareholders need a robust, profitable growth that keeps on coming. So that’s the role of the CEO. But I love writing and I keep on writing blogs, mainly on LinkedIn. So I had once made five full forms of a CEO. And actually, people came out with more comments on that. But I’ll tell you, one is Chief Energy or Chief Enthusiasm Officer.

I can’t be a CEO if I have bad body language and a sad face. And it’s not a plastic smile. There’s something called a Duchenne smile, which is a genuine smile, which goes from your lips to your eyes. And you have to be positive, energetic and you have to show them the way. So it’s Chief Energy Enthusiasm Officer, CEO.

CEO is Chief Empathy Officer, because you will not believe, so many people have so many problems and they want to discuss with you. And you just can’t say your problem is your problem, my problem is my problem. I have to give them a patient ear and the peoples team that we have is fantastic. They keep on listening. If somebody is coming late every day, there has to be — it’s not intent. 80% to 90% people want to do a good day’s work. So one needs to go and find out, have the empathy and go out of the way to take care of the employees.

CEO is the Chief Education Officer. So you have to keep on educating customers, educating employees, educating shareholders, educating your partners about what you believe is the right way of doing things. And that’s why CEO also stands for the Chief Equilibrium Officer. So you have to manage the equilibrium.

And finally, this is what my son says, CEO stands for the Chief Entertainment Officer. So, unless you have a few laughs in the day and unless a job is a job, finally, you have life. And I will tell you one more thing, you should read this. It’s a wonderful book called “The Five Regrets of the Dying.” It’s by a lady called Bronnie Ware. And she was a caregiver for dying patients for four years in Australia. And she wrote a blog and then she wrote a book called “The Five Regrets of the Dying.” I think it’s an amazing book.

It’s a very positive book. It tells you a lot of things that people regret when they’re about to leave the world. And one of them is, “Oh, no, I shouldn’t have worked so hard.” So, I don’t believe, for example, in late sitting for the sake of late sitting. I have done a lot of night out myself, but you need to do a good day’s work and also need to have a balance beyond that. So — but yeah, but that’s what the CEO’s job is. In my first CEO’s role, I lost a lot of hair. In my second CEO’s role, I got a paunch. So let me see — so let me see what happens in my third CEO role.

Radhakrishnan Chonat: A lot of insights, probably. This is one of the best definition of a leadership role that I’ve heard so far from all my guests. I’m glad I asked this question. So, while you’re wearing multiple hats throughout the day, let me ask you this. How do you wind off? What are sort of your hobbies or how do you chill out basically?

Abhijit Bhave: So, that’s actually a very, very important thing, because stress is a part of life. And I’ve gone through stress and ups and downs happen in organizations. You’ll get stressed all the time. The stress can’t go away. You’ll have to learn to manage the stress. So, obviously take breaks. I don’t smoke. I don’t go out for tea or coffee. I have my lunch very quickly. But I do take mental breaks in office, which means that I stand up.

I walk and talk. I think that’s important. People say that sitting is the new smoking. So I just stand up. I walk on my phone, my AirPods. I keep on walking while talking. I go out and chit-chat with people. But I also have meetings which are actually breaks because I meet people from outside the organization also very regularly, which is important. I think it’s important to go out.

But in terms of unwinding, there are a few things I do. So I’ve actually gone through some, what should I say, even health scares in the past that have given me a good perspective of balancing things even in terms of your personal life, your health, your family life. So, I do regular practice of meditation every single day. I do yoga twice a week. I do my gym twice a week. And I also love walking. So, this year I couldn’t manage it because of an injury. But for the last three years, I’ve been doing 15,000 steps on 15th of August and 26,000 steps on 26th of Jan. But I have been doing 10,000 steps every day, now it’s come down to 6,000 to 8,000. But I think walking is something that is good. I love reading.

And the other thing I do is, I just go to YouTube and I look at some nice positive videos that helps. And I think even silence helps. Being with yourself helps. And one of the biggest stress busters that I have in life besides my family. I think family support is very important. I have been married for 24 years. My son is 16. It really helps to spend time with them. But one time, RC, I look forward to, throughout the week, is Sunday morning. Sunday morning is the time where I walk my dog for one hour without the phone. And that is the most peaceful time I have the entire week.

So, a lot of things. What I would just say is that stress is a part of life. You can’t go away with that. If you want to have success in a country like India, where there are thousands of people standing behind you to replace you, you have to learn to manage it. I will just tell you one anecdote. It was my 40th birthday and my Deutsche Bank HR Head Raman came to me and he said, Abhijit, we can now recruit somebody who’s 30 at half your salary who will do two-thirds of your work. Happy birthday, work harder.

Radhakrishnan Chonat: What a nice way to put it.

Abhijit Bhave: Yeah.

Radhakrishnan Chonat: Wow. That’s a great way. I think this is a big lesson for all of us on how to unwind and understand that stress is part of your life. You can’t take stress away from your life. So, learn to manage it. Excellent. Abhijit ji, you know that this is a question that I ask every single guest. And I mean, actually, I was a little worried because throughout the conversation you were showing all the books. Can I have a couple of more books for your recommendation list. What would be the books that you would recommend for me as well as for my audience?

Abhijit Bhave: So it depends on what you’re looking at. And I just tell you this, a lot of people say that and a lot of people don’t like reading. You may not want to read, but you can just have an audio book. But I have this firm belief that somebody has spent a few years, somebody has written books after working for 15, 20 years and that experience they’re putting in one document, which you can kind of absorb in a matter of a few days. So why not? It’s a crash course. It’s like, you’ve seen those sci-fi movies. We are having this injection where you’re having knowledge being inserted. So that’s why I think it’s important to read or even have an audio book. Something very basic, if you want to look at success.

Sorry, before that, this is a question I ask people. You want success, they say yes. You want happiness, they say yes. I said, you want wealth, they’ll say yes. You want health, they’ll say yes. But having everything is difficult, right? But if you’re looking at success, there’s a book which I read many, many years back and the writer is a client of mine. He’s an amazing person, Shiv Khera. His book is called The Habit of — “You Can Win.” It’s an amazing book. It’s something I will recommend to all youngsters.

I have already told you about “The Habit of Winning,” which is the book by Prakash Iyer. This is for success. For success, I will tell you read Jack Welch’s Winning. It’s amazing. He talks of the four things that he looks for somebody who he interviews. Four E’s again, by the way. E is execution. E is the ability to execution — Energy. Second is energy. Third E is ability to energize. And fourth E is the edge. These things really help.

If you want to become a leader, then I would say that read a book called ” The Leader Who Had No Title”. This is by Robin Sharma. And this book also, Winning, also will give you a lot of things about leadership. Mid-career executives have to read a book by Marshall Goldsmith. It’s called ” What Got You Here Won’t Get You There.” It’s a ladder on the cover which says that I’m in middle management. It actually gives you 21 career mistakes that people do mid-career because, they have been successful for 10, 15 years and they believe that this is the right way. So it’s important in your careers to always understand that you can go wrong, unlearn and relearn.

More on the philosophical front, I would say that if you want to be happy in life, you should read this very nice book called Magic by Rhonda Byrne, which is the second part of the book Secret. And it tells you the power of gratitude. I think it’s important. A lot of things in life, RC, happens because of pure luck. One can say that I am very hardworking and all that stuff, but luck plays a lot in your career. So you have to be grateful. People play a lot of things to make you successful.

Two last books I’ll tell you. This is something which is for me is gospel. To be a professional, you should read this book from Subroto Bagchi called “The Professional.” And one of the new books I have liked is, all people like me who have worked for a long time, we say I’ve worked for 30 decades and we love to give gyan to people. We love to talk for a long time and write long, long notes. Nobody’s interested. Nobody is interested in reading long emails, long messages because the time span is very short.

This very nice book I came across called Smart Brevity. And after that, I’ve started writing short stuff. I think it helps. So one has to keep on looking at new things. And that’s where reading helps me personally, because the world is moving so fast. And if I don’t move very fast, I will become a dinosaur. One last book actually. I had this opportunity of listening to a person called Peter Diamandis. Have you ever heard of him?

Radhakrishnan Chonat: Yes. Yes.

Abhijit Bhave: He’s called a futurist and he was one of the people invited for the great Indian wedding.

Radhakrishnan Chonat: Singularity right.

Abhijit Bhave: Yeah. And, this is his book called Longevity. Amazing book.

Radhakrishnan Chonat: Wow, nice.

Abhijit Bhave: Amazing book which tells you that you can live till 150, 200, it’s possible. So a lot of books. I can give you a list of maybe thousand books I have read. But these are the books I would recommend people and maybe two more books, if you allow me.

Radhakrishnan Chonat: Absolutely, sir. Absolutely. Go ahead.

Abhijit Bhave: Once I had gone to Amazon or Flipkart to buy a perfume and I saw this book priced for 100 rupees and I bought it. And the book was called ” Who Will Cry When You Die?” Amazing eye opener. This is by Robin Sharma. And one last thing I’ll tell you — this is one final thing. If you want to be successful in life; hard work, education, knowledge, skills, all that is a given.

One thing that people miss out, that is the biggest reason of success for a lot of people is people management, interpersonal skills. In my job, I only need two things. People management, time management. Everything else somebody else does for me. So there is an outstanding book called “How to Win Friends and Influence People” by Dale Carnegie. And that has really kind of opened myself. There are a lot of HR theories that one talks about and one of them is the Johari Window. And I think Johari Window talks about how to learn more about yourself so that you improve yourself. So that book really helped me improve myself. So long answer. Sorry for that.

Radhakrishnan Chonat: No, absolutely. Dale Carnegie’s 100 plus year old book, How to Win Friends and Influence People. I think that is definitely one of the best books that I’ve personally ever read. And I’m going to reread this. It’s been quite a few years since I read it. I’m going to reread this. This is one of the best book recommendations I’ve got so far with all my guests. It’s been an absolute pleasure. Time just flew. Catch up with you. The kind of frameworks that you have, not just to your clients, to your employees as well. No wonder you are a very, very successful leader.

Abhijit ji, it’s been an absolute pleasure to have you as my first guest where I try to delve into the minds of business leaders in my new series called CEO Insights. Look forward to more such interactions in the future.

Abhijit Bhave: Thank you so much. It’s a pleasure for me. Thank you so much.

Radhakrishnan Chonat: Thank you.

Abhijit Bhave: Yeah. Okay. Bye.