“Uniqueness In The Common World” Rightly Proven By Ascent Wealth Advisors
Many a times we come across news that describe startups failure story or their downfall. Reasons for these are that they don’t get proper guidance and don’t have proper knowledge of the market and strategies to sustain the current world. Today we are going to talk about a company named “Ascent Wealth Advisors” and its uniqueness of :
Helping investors invest in great companies much before they begin their exponential growth and thereby create high return on investments for our investors.
Ascent Wealth Advisors (www.unlistedinvestments.com) wants to enable common man to reap the benefits of making sophisticated unlisted investments. They want to increase retail participation in unlisted stocks so that they can reap the benefits of investing in pre-ipo shares. Often retail investors get to invest later in the lifecycle of the company’s growth cycle that too when the company has come out with an IPO.
The expert team consists of hard working analysts with experience in investment banking and research. Coupled with strong fundamentals, the team has nearly 5 years of experience dealing in unlisted and pre-ipo markets. The dynamic team has a passion to find great companies with proven successful track record to enable investors get a high return on long-term investments.
They place very high value to trust, transparency, integrity, honesty and hard work. It is these values that help them deliver great value to their clients who keep coming back to them for making more investments and guidance. These values make them the best to follow their passion. Here are the list of services they offer:
Investor Education:
They provide guidance to investors in their journey of investing in unquoted / unlisted shares. They help investors from the most preliminary steps like educating them how the unquoted / unlisted share markets work, how to transact in unlisted shares, what are the things an investor should know about unquoted investments, various pit falls to avoid in journey of investing and tips on successful investing.
Buying/Selling shares:
They help investors and individuals holding unlisted / unquoted shares to buy or sell unlisted shares through them.
Monetizing ill-liquid unquoted investments:
They help employees working with unlisted companies to sell their shares and free up blocked capital. This may help them in meeting their personal needs like funding home loans, investing in more liquid assets, meeting any other financial need arising out of the stage of life cycle they are in. They typically buy shares from ESOP pools and from investors and pass them on other investors who have longer term need of higher returns and can wait longer periods after making investments.
We exclusively interviewed this great passionate venture and here we present to you their journey throughout today and plans for future to keep on benefiting the common man:
1. What is the Name of Your Venture? Any specific reason for this name?
The name of my venture is Ascent Wealth Advisors. The reason for selecting
this name is to align my vision of providing useful advisory which can increase the wealth of clients.
2. Who is your target Audience/clients?
Our target audience includes High Net worth Individuals (HNIs), Businessmen, Wealth Managers, C-suite Executives, stock market investors and every individual who wishes to plan for their wealth management.
3. Where is your venture based (city, state, country) & what are your geographical target areas?
My venture is based in Mumbai, also popularly known as the financial capital of India. We are doing business across India and do not have any set geographical targets but we have often seen a lot of traction from Metros and wealthy cities.
4. What problems does your venture resolve? What are your products or services?
Earlier, the business of private placements was restricted to the elite few wealthy sections of the society. We are taking the experience to the next level of target segments, the more common man and the next wealthy section of the society. Why is this helpful? Most of the companies grow the fastest when they are small, after achieving a scale, they tend to mature and grow slower. Most of the companies listed on stock exchanges, have already seen a significant growth. Thus most investors miss out the bus while the company was small and growing. We are taking this opportunity to common people and helping them get alpha returns on their investments.
5. Share the idea or story behind the venture. How did it come to an existence? What motivated you to start your own venture?
This venture was born out of personal experience of doing successful investments in unlisted shares when this opportunity was shared by friends and after having made money. We helped other friends and soon there were a lot of people asking for similar assistance. Thus, started the journey to grow the business on scale and help everyone.
6. Who are your biggest competitors and how do you differentiate yourself from them?
This market is very huge and there are a lot of competitors. It will be difficult to identify biggest competitors as the market is very opaque and evolving.
The way we differentiate from others is by focusing on giving investment opportunity at reasonable rates. Wealth management is a business involving high levels of trust. Thus we ensure that we keep the interest of investors at the apex. This ensures we get a lot of business from referrals.
7. How did you identify your co-founder? Tell us something about your co-founder/s
No co-founders.
8. How did you hire your first team members? What skills do you want in your employees/team?
We have few team members from close family.
9. What expansion plans are you looking for the next 2 years, next 5 years?
Over the next two years, we plan to augment our research, strengthen our brand, increase our outreach and generate more investment opportunities. We plan to expand our research base by building a dedicated team and subscribing to the best of the data providers. We plan to strengthen our brand by providing excellent customer service; networking on social media, creating awareness among investor communities and helping investors generate higher returns. We plan to increase our outreach from Mumbai to other Metros and gradually in other cities as well. This will help us garner more customers from each location as we understand their needs better by going closer to the market. Enhanced research, larger customer base and strong brand will help us garner more investment opportunities which in turn will help us deliver great returns and boost the virtuous cycle of creating wealth and growing our business.
10. Where do you want to see yourself in next 10 years?
I wish to see my venture as a part of top tier wealth advisory firms in India.
11. What are your goals over the next 1, 3, 6 and 12 months?
My short term goals are very specific to the above mentioned growth plan for the next two years. This would include a mix of recruiting the best talent, setting up the infrastructure, connecting with people and so on.
12. Have you raised any funding? Or have any plans for the funding?
We have not raised any funds and with the kind of response our business has gained, we do not see any need for funding in near term. On a lighter note, we are managing our wealth enough to not need funds !!
13. What were the problems you faced during the starting days and how did you resolve them?
We faced problems in getting the first few customers as the field too was evolving and the awareness in the market was very low (it still is but comparatively speaking it was very less). We resolved them by using our strong analytics to explain the benefits to our early clients. Thereafter once their success became public, a lot of referrals kept coming and there was no looking back.
14. What was the most challenging part of your journey till now? How did you overcome those challenges?
Getting the first few customers was the biggest challenge till now but I am sure there are bigger challenges awaiting as we explore the journey ahead.
15. Are you married, single or in a relationship?
I am married
16.What are your hobbies? What do you do in your non-work time?
My hobbies include reading about science and technology, playing chess, meditating and performing yoga.
17. Whats your favourite food &family holiday destination?
My favourite food is Pizza and favourite holiday destination is any green peaceful island.
18. Whom do you consider your idol or biggest motivator?
There is no particular person; I find inspiration from many, both famous and normal people around me.
19. What do you feel is the major difference between entrepreneurs and those who work for someone else?
The major difference between entrepreneurs and employees is that the horizon of decision making is huge.
20. If you had the chance to start your career over again, what would you do differently?
I would have started earlier and I would have focused on research more extensively.
21. How has being an entrepreneur affected your family & Social life?
Yes, it has empowered me at times to meet the needs of my family and at times I had to compromise on my comforts and lead a difficult restricted life.
22. Anything, you would like to say to our readers or upcoming Entrepreneurs?
Know your strengthens and tap opportunities related to them.
23. Tell us something about your education & family background.
I am an MBA in Finance and have also done a diploma in Entrepreneurship from the Indian Entrepreneurship Institute, Ahmedabad as I was keen on Doing business since young age.
24. What is your USP which makes it unique & different from other start-ups in similar domains.
Very frankly I don’t see any USP as such . If there is any, then I am unable to identify it at the moment.
25. What do you think is the biggest threat to the success of small businesses & Start-ups today?
The biggest threat to small businesses and start-ups is the ability to learn quickly with the rapidly changing business environment, scale and newer technologies. Change in each element needs to be dealt correctly to flourish.
26. Do you consider yourself successful and by what means do you measure success?
Success is a very relative term. If you measure by money you make versus Money you spend in making that money, then yes, I am successful. I haven’t Thought much about success yet. My mind focuses on growing, developing, learning and such other things. Success is something we will look later maybe 5-10 years down the line when we have nothing else to look forward to!!