Entrepreneurship is a journey that is unending. It begins with a lot of challenges and prevails through your legacy, even after you are long gone. Being an entrepreneur is not an easy task. It requires patience, conviction, and a passion to deliver excellence. This success story highlights the journey of an entrepreneur by heart who left a cushy banking job and gave wings to his entrepreneurial aspirations.

In today’s competitive business era, there are people who are eager to work on ‘out-of-the-box’ ideas with a motive to resolve the complex business environment.  Abhinav Angirish, Founder of Abchlor and InvestOnline is one such persona who firmly believes to prove his mettle in the financial domain. Putting aside a hefty monthly salary and perks, he had a vision that saw the light of the day through his wealth management company. “The fintech industry is constantly evolving and high regulation prevents innovation. But, that’s what I am here to solve” is how Abhinav put forth his novel idea of change.

As a financial entrepreneur, he is driven by a passion to help people make their hard-earned money work for them. Initially, he started his career as a Relationship Manager with an MNC bank in the year 2000. After a few successful years there, in 2001, Abhinav moved to India’s largest private sector bank, as Relationship Manager for High Net-worth Clients (HNI). Through innovative marketing and strategic thinking, he made it a habit to excel by continuously exceeding targets. He played an instrumental role in making his branch reach the top position and retain it throughout his tenure. InvestOnline is not Abhinav’s first entrepreneurial stint though. He successfully founded Abchlor Investment Advisors Pvt. Ltd., in 2004 and has been serving as the Managing Director of the company ever since.

Genesis of Abchlor

Abhinav decided to take his passion a step further as for him; a stable and promising career was not enough. His vision was to establish a wealth management company with a spectrum of financial products and that does not operate on standardized processes. Each client has different goals and hence the process flow for each client has to be a customized one. He wanted to make his customers feel special, to treat them with a personal touch. The focus was to ensure thorough financial planning which was still a new concept in India.

“There is no magic trick to success. In the end, it boils down to sitting at work and grind”

Abchlor Investments was formed in 2004 with the vision of setting a benchmark of service in wealth management. Abhinav started nurturing the company and his hard work and perseverance paid off, within the first year of founding the company. Abchlor Investments managed to amass over Rs. 100 crores worth of assets. The company began its expansion in Mutual Funds, Equity Broking and Equity Advisory besides the other financial products such as Bonds, IPOs, etc. In 2005, he managed to acquire the single largest deal in the industry with Rs. 120 crores of individual funds in a single day. In 2006, other products such as Real Estate Consulting, Home Loans, and Securitized Loans were added to the offerings.

Dynamics of InvestOnline

InvestOnline is India’s first feature-rich website backed by cutting edge technology. It is a single gateway to access multiple mutual fund schemes. InvestOnline aims to simplify the world of mutual fund investment, and therefore, a host of benefits are available on this platform. It allows investors to track investments or link multiple folios of his family from a single login ID. “We offer completely paperless transactions. Our focus is to blend technology with traditional tools,” describes Abhinav.

The company is also offering state of the art tools to research funds. As mentioned earlier, the firm’s focus is innovation through technology. One of the highlights of its offering is that a customer can also set a future transaction date. In short, the team of InvestOnline has ensured that the customer feels at ease while investing.

InvestOnline was conceptualized in 2006, at a time when online transactions were in its infancy stage. People preferred to deal with local brokers and it was tough to convince them to transact online. People are generally passive with money. They view financial advisory as a sales process rather than guidance.

Adding to this, in June 2009, SEBI announced the abolishing of Entry Loads (an avg. of 2.25% for equity funds) which is the marketing and distribution cost charged by funds. People were reluctant to pay extra fees. Many chose to shut shop. It was a herculean task convincing people. “I always made the most of adversity. I decided to offer a platform to transact at no cost,” says Abhinav.

The website offered convenience while enjoying the host of features online. This was a bold move and raised the eyebrows of his competitors. His hunch paid off and investors wholeheartedly embraced his idea of launching InvestOnline. Soon the website became a popular destination of investing fraternity.

InvestOnline aims to be among the top three investment portals in India. Instead of becoming an ingredient, the company strives to become a complete solution provider and wants to transform investing with the help of the internet, cloud, and mobile in the modern technology stack.

Concluding this exclusive excerpt, Abhinav believes in leveraging technology to move beyond transactions to build relationships. The ultimate objective is to cut costs and complexities from the investing process and Abhinav wishes to achieve just that.