Chennai-based fintech AssetPlus is planning to onboard over 8,000 financial advisors and mutual fund distributors on its platform in next 18 months besides becoming a full-stack financial platform by expanding its product portfolio. 

“Currently, we have a little over 1,500 financial advisors and mutual fund distributors (MFDs) across the country using AssetPlus platform. Our aim is to take this number to 5,000 by the end of this fiscal and reach 10,000 by September 2023,” Vishranth Suresh, Co-founder, AssetPlus, told BusinessLine. 

Launched in 2018 by Suresh and Awanish Raj - both IIT Madras graduates - AssetPlus offers digital-first solutions to financial advisors and mutual fund distributors. It provides comprehensive technology and business development solutions to traditional MFDs to increase their digital brand presence and grow their Mutual Fund business online.  It offers a cost-free lifetime registration to all registered members to expand their services to geographies with a single dashboard.

Effects ₹1,000-cr MF investment

Started with just 5-6 mutual fund advisors serving about 300 clients with ₹10 crore in assets under management, the platform, at the end of previous fiscal, has executed more than ₹1,000 crore in mutual fund investments serving more than 2.5 lakh investors. 

“We had pretty good growth over the last 3 years. The Covid-19 pandemic came as a blessing in disguise for us as things swiftly moved digital and investors also moved away from traditional assets to stocks and mutual funds in the last few years,” Suresh said. 

In May, the company raised $3.6 million in funding led by InCred Founder & CEO, Bhupinder Singh, and Zerodha Co-Founder & CEO, Nithin Kamath. It also expanded its product portfolio to include National Pension Scheme (NPS) and corporate FDs in partnership with Mahindra Finance and Shriram Transport Finance.

MF business volumes at 80-85 pc

“Since our Mutual Funds business is gaining a lot of traction, we felt this is the right time to go aggressive on that while simultaneously looking at adding more financial products,” Suresh said. The company is looking to add life and general insurance products and sovereign gold bonds (SGBs) on the platform. 

“Mutual Fund will continue to contribute to 80-85 per cent of the volume while all the other products cumulatively will contribute the remaining for the next few years,” he adds. 

Suresh said Tier 2&3 towns offer immense headroom for growth for the mutual fund industry as well as for AssetPlus. “We are seeing that trend already. Both AMFI data as well as the number of distributors we onboard show that the majority of the investors are coming from B30 locations.” As per Sebi, B30 refers to the geographical locations beyond the top 30 cities in the country.

AssetPlus adds 200 new distributors every month and 80 per cent of its distributors are from Tier 2&3 towns.

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