Basiz Fund Service is in operation for the last 15 years with clients and manpower spread across Singapore, India (Mumbai, Chennai, GIFT City – Gandhinagar), Bahrain and USA (New Jersey). Basiz which is an Ops Global Singapore Company, is the first Fund Administrator to be approved to operate in Gujarat International Fin-Tec (GIFT) City, India’s first offshore financial destination. Aditya Sesh, Founder & Managing Director, Basiz Fund Service shares with Rajneesh De, Consulting Editor, APAC News Network his insights on financial reporting, Private Equity, Venture Capital and Cryptocurrency.
Can you please elaborate on Basiz Fund Service being approved as Fund Administrator in GIFT city?
We have received IFSCA nod to open a branch in GIFT City. Being approved as an acceleration services provider in GIFT city is an important event for us as it enables us to provide fund administration and trustee services for alternative funds. This will enable us to provide services relating to the preparation, compilation, and review of financial statements, book-keeping, and accounting services, and compliance & secretarial services, and other suite of services that are required from a service provider in the fund domain.
We remain the first fund administrator to be licensed to set up shop in GIFT City, Gandhinagar. This is in line with our methodology of “Made in India for the World” and we firmly believe that the association and participation in IFSCA, is also part of “Atma Nirbhar Bharat” Program. Also, in order to provide the vast array of services that we are planning, we plan to increase headcount across all the units to reach 40-50 high-end professionally qualified resources over the next three to five years. Most of these resources will be sourced locally, generating substantial employment opportunities for the locals.
How are the Basiz high technology areas of Fund and Legal Tech products?
Based on our experience in the fund industry and our deep experience in technology services and products that were implemented internally, we have now gone into creating legaltech, tax tech and fundtech products and blockchain oriented programming. These are cutting edge technologies. We have a wide spectrum of service offerings which is a mix of the B2B and B2C business. Apart from our core business of Fund Administration, Fund Accounting and Financial Statement Reporting which is heavily people, process and technology dependent, we are also venturing into pure SAAS models like legal tech and commerce tech products.
Each one of our products and services is made based on a value proposition and the cutting edge technologies, products that were implemented internally, have now gone into creating legaltech tax tech and fundtech products and blockchain oriented programming based on our deep understanding of the industry. For e.g. our legal tech product incorporates features to the legal industry at a fraction of the cost that they would be incurring today and will be of benefit to them and their clients. Within our organization, clients will find almost every need being catered to.
What are the new patented products and services you are launching?
Basiz will continue to be amongst the leading players in the ITES space. We have patented products related to software products in Legal tech and Taxtech part of our enterprise story. These are niches within niches created after detailed service voice of the customer exercises and in-depth conversation with stakeholders understanding their pain. We have self-developed Intellectual Property Fund-Tech Products like, Basiz Master Draft; Stat Talk and Letter Flow. Going forward, we will also be investing heavily in technology and increasing headcount and our associate network by at least 50% over the next couple of years.
How would you predict the future of cryptocurrency in India?
Cryptocurrency in its different forms is bound to be issued by progressive sovereign nations. It will start off as a digital version of the mint. Other cryptocurrencies will continue to become mainstream over a period of time, but will be regarded more as a trading asset class and not as a function of expression of values in the near to medium horizon and will bring down the cost of currency creation as well as their monitoring. Basiz as an international fund administrator has already administered crypto currency assets around the world. Our participation for the moment will be limited to fund administration. We believe in future sovereign currencies will themselves be block chain-enabled.
How was the impact of the pandemic on hedge funds and how are things changing?
In general, a hedge fund benefits out of catalytic situations in the market or at the worst post a better than market return. In 2021 YTD the Eureka Hedge Fund Index returned 8.60% Dollar return compared to 12.79% in 2020 compared to 9.52% United States large cap index in 2021 YTD. Power hedge funds have better volatility managed from this perspective and therefore produce linear returns. As the situation improves the hedge funds are designed to offer better returns than benchmark equity.
What are going to be your key focus areas for the next few quarters?
While we will continue to focus on our traditional businesses of fund administration, financial reporting, Fund taxation including United States and Indian taxation. We will also focus on verticals like REBOOT GIFT IFSC Fund Platform, Legaltech, Fundtech, People Services that are the key drivers for us both in the international and domestic markets. We have always maintained our focus on ‘Made in India for the world’, ‘Go vocal for local’ and this enables us to offer services not based on geographical markets but based on opportunity and customer needs. This also explains why we have both international and domestic revenues complementing each other.
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