Kotak Securities plans to tap investors through social media

One of the country’s largest retail broking houses, Kotak Securities, with a customer base of 10 lakh is betting big on technology to maintain its market leader position.

After capturing 36 per cent share of the mobile trading market, the company plans to launch a new website in the next two months. This website, which would be social media compliant, would also offer an integrated user interface for its research and trading engine arm.

The plan is to attract a new set of investors in the youth bracket and reduce the company’s cost of customer acquisition using technology options that they are already accustomed to and come to expect when they trade as well.

Speaking to Business Line , Executive Vice-President, Head — Broking, Kotak Securities, B Gopkumar said: “Social media behaviour is typically to tell the world whatever you have done. Our website is built on the same philosophy. People buy a stock and want to tell the world they have bought it and we have developed the website according to SEBI’s guidelines on regulating stock tips on social media.” These new measures are in keeping with the changes in the retail broking industry over the last five years with increasing focus on technology to drive customer acquisitions and growing business after the 2008 market fall.

Increasing cost effect Retail broking business in equities has been under tremendous pressure in recent times owing to increasing costs, competition and investors switching from equities to alternative asset classes, such as fixed income and real estate, for safer returns.

According to Gopkumar, today’s customers seek multiple platforms, whether it be mobile, desktop, website or applications offering advanced features. Other measures in the pipeline at Kotak Securities for boosting its tech front include setting up of a new innovation centre in a year, undertaking an exhaustive market study to ascertain customers’ needs through the mobility platform and launching a derivatives-focused trading app.

“When we build the mobile app we thought we shall get traction only in the cash market but since we got great response from the derivatives segment also, we will learn from that and further tweak our app offerings to enable smoother trading in futures and options for customers,” he added.