Financial literacy is something that has been overlooked in our lives. How to and where to invest is a different thing, but how to and where to spend money is also something we generally don’t understand or have not been taught.
“Finance is an ocean and you get to learn something new every day,” says Mr. Samir Joshi, the Founder of Blooming Rich which takes care of financial planning and wealth management. With Sociobits, Mr. Samir Joshi shares his story, about Blooming Rich and also about how we can teach money management to people, and young ones too. Here’s an exclusive interview with the founder.
Team Sociobits: Could you tell us a little about yourself?
Mr. Samir Joshi: Speaking of myself, I am the Co-Founder of Blooming Rich and I have a vast experience in Banking and Finance, for more than 10 years. I have always been a Mumbaikar so I have spent most of my time in Mumbai. I was raised in a very conservative Brahman family, with a very small space to live in. Starting from there, and reaching this business, I feel it’s a huge achievement on a personal front.
Team Sociobits: Could you tell us more about Blooming Rich?
Co-Founder: Blooming Rich is financial planning and wealth management firm. When I say financial planning, it means that we manage cash flows for our existing clients, we set goals for them, we also ensure that they have X amount of net worth right now and we can help them take it to the next level. So, we set some targets to build their net worth and during this process, we also manage their financial portfolios. This is called wealth management, wherein we recommend certain financial products on the basis of their risk capacity, goal, and time duration.
So, we suggest a suitable vehicle on the basis of these and we keep reviewing it time and again to see if there is anything that we should change or not. It’s a constant process. Once you are done with investing, you constantly need to manage your risk. This is another forte of my business. We don’t just plan and manage wealth, we also manage risk. Here, ROC is very important.
When people ask me, what’s the return on my capital? I immediately tell them the return on your capital will generate automatically when you manage your risk to keep your return off capital intact.
When people ask me, what’s the return on my capital? I immediately tell them the return on your capital will generate automatically when you manage your risk to keep your return off capital intact.
So we started with Blooming Rich around three years and I started out as an individual from my home, moving to a smaller office. Now, we have got a bigger corporate office in Andheri, Mumbai. I have a team size of around 8 – 10 people and we also have an in-house digital marketing team, and videography team, we are active on social media, and we have that technological edge that sitting in Mumbai, I can manage investments of clients anywhere in the world. We have clients scattered across the globe and I am managing decent-sized -portfolios for a lot of high net-worth clients.
Team Sociobits: Could you tell us the story of when you started ideating Blooming Rich?
Co-Founder: So, I’ll tell you about a small incident. When I was a part of a large corporate, with an insurance company for a very small stint, I had a colleague who I used to interact with. He was also the only person to whom I committed that by the age of 40, I would either be the CEO of my own firm or I’ll be the CEO of some other firm. So, that’s when I started thinking about having my own business and I also started learning the process. It took longer; I gave it a thought in 2016, and I executed and established the company in 2019. By this time, I had clients who had faith in me and had been with me for many years so, they were ready to get their financial portfolios transferred to my company. I got fantastic support from all my clients and I thank them a lot for that.
One thing that I have followed throughout is that I managed all the portfolios with a lot of ethics. So, when I manage finance, I don’t think about my own profits, instead, I think about how I can enhance wealth and create a positive impact on my client’s financial portfolios and finally, help them grow. I think that if I grow my client’s money and my client’s wealth, I will automatically make money. My objective is not to make money, it is to build wealth for my client. This is also why we have tremendous quality while managing portfolios. We are absolutely unbiased with our approach and when we talk about any investment vehicle, we research it thoroughly before placing it into any client’s portfolio. So, things are going well so far and I actually don’t need a grievance redressal team because there are hardly any complaints from our clients. And when it is a service-related thing, it is taken care of properly. It’s the relationship that we take care of and we work in such a meticulous manner that there is no room for any grievance.
On the other hand, I have had the opportunity to visit various corporates and I have been to multiple organizations as a guest speaker I have so far spoken at 30 – 35 companies on financial planning and its importance. I believe that we can get financial planners even for people at the CXO level but for somebody who is earning between 3 – 15 lakhs, they need strong hand holding. Because if there is someone who guides that person at the initial stage of their career, that creates a huge impact on the person’s financial domain for their entire life.
I’ve had bad experiences, I never had anyone who taught me how to manage my money. In the initial phase of my career, I struggled a lot in terms of money but ever since I got into this field, I have sorted my personal finances as well. So, it started from my end initially, and then I took it over to the world.
I was invited by the Municipal Corporation of Mumbai as a guest speaker where all the teachers from a particular zone of Mumbai had gathered and I spoke about finance management for teachers because they will be teaching this to their students.
Team Sociobits: Even today, schools and colleges don’t teach money management. What kind of efforts can we put to change this?
Co-Founder: There is a subject for everything but there is no subject on how you can manage your individual finances. But, just 2 -3 days ago I was invited by the Municipal Corporation of Mumbai as a guest speaker where all the teachers from a particular zone of Mumbai had gathered and I spoke about finance management for teachers because they will be teaching this to their students. So, I think the government has taken the initiative of bringing a financial literacy flavor to the education ecosystem. I am not sure whether private institutions have started this or not. But every institution and school needs to impart financial literacy to their students. Maybe not at the primary level but at the higher secondary level where the student is on the verge of completing his school life. And when they move on to their college life, institutions and the government should take decisions to create financial literacy among them as well.
Team Sociobits: Apart from students, if an individual wants to learn how to manage their finances, where should they go?
Co-Founder: Today, the media has reached a level where if you just type ‘financial planners’ on the internet, you will get a list of financial planners. What I would suggest is that you can do your due diligence before you get on board with any financial planner. First, you need to see whether they are creating a plan for you. Second, check whether their approach is product-oriented or concept oriented. If the planner conceptualizes a plan towards meeting your goal and then coming to the product, then I would say that he is a good financial advisor. Somebody who comes to the product initially, according to me, is an advisor that you may avoid. So this is a difference that I can suggest when people choose their financial planner.
Team Sociobits: As someone who is always up-to-date in the financial world, what do you think about the current global economic situation? Will there be a recession?
Co-Founder: I recently met a fund manager from a top AMCs in the market and she was very positive about India’s economic growth. Currently, India is close to a $3 trillion economy and a few years back we were close to a $1.5 trillion economy. I believe that very recent news says that India is looking at UP as a state to make it a $1 trillion economy as an individual state. So, I would say that recession will always keep coming and going, wars will happen, and governments will change, but it will always have a growth trajectory at least for another fifteen to twenty years because we are still a developing nation. And something which was a concern for people has become a strength and that’s the population. Because of the large population, we have a marketplace for a lot of businesses and we also have a large consumption. This spikes the demand for any sort of product that is consumed by Indians. And as Indians, we are used to saving money but we are also used to spending it and because of the presence of digital platforms, we can also purchase anything with our fingertips.
Even though the Indian currency is depreciating right now, the economy of other countries is doing worse right now as compared to India. So, our country is still in a very strong position, and in the next 5 – 10 years, there is a possibility that India becomes a $5 trillion economy.
As far as the recessionary period is concerned, when COVID struck the entire world and the financial markets tumbled in 2020, India bagged a lot of foreign currencies. So, we had a tremendous amount of Forex Reserves, and even though the Indian currency is depreciating right now, the economy of other countries is doing worse right now as compared to India. So, our country is still in a very strong position, and in the next 5 – 10 years, there is a possibility that India becomes a $5 trillion economy. We don’t need to worry about a recession, we’ll have growth coming in.
Team Sociobits: What are your future plans with Blooming Rich? How are you planning to grow?
Co-Founder: Right now, we have expanded our business; we have moved into a bigger office, hired some more employees, and we are looking forward to targeting at least Rs. 500 crores of assets under our management in another three years. We have around Rs. 70 – 80 crores right now.
After this, we are looking to penetrate the overseas market like the Middle East, Singapore, and some emerging African countries because, after India, the next emerging market for FIIs would be African countries. We will also be targeting to form an NBFC and create our in-house product. We are not a manufacturer right now, we only distribute third-party manufacturers’ products. So, we want to manufacture our own product or maybe an asset management company. We also have a target to have an AIF i.e. an Alternative Investment Fund and we will strive for that once we reach the first target.
The founder of Blooming Rich gave us some valuable insights on the ‘talked-about-everywhere’ recession, how to choose a financial advisor or planner, and more. It also gives us an idea of how the economy may look a few years down the line.
