In an exclusive conversation with CXO Media and APAC Media, Bruce Keith, CEO & Co-Founder, InvestorAI explains the functioning of chatbot Vani in the roadmap to democratize wealth management
Please tell us about InvestorAi, how does it work, if you could explain in detail?
Globally, investing and trading have grown significantly over the past five years. Many first-time investors are often unsure of what to buy, how long to hold investments for, and how to implement good practice, such as diversification. Additionally, next-gen investors are more comfortable making investment decisions without the need for a financial advisor when they have the right tools available to them.
The traditional approach to these investors has been to either offer mutual funds to access active or passive strategies that are professionally managed. Whilst this may serve their investing needs, it often doesn’t align with their experience of other digital first activities or with their personal preferences to maintain control and customizable options.
InvestorAi is an advanced technology firm, that uses AI and other modern technology to revolutionise broking, wealth, and asset management. Our approach combines profound domain expertise, innovative thinking, and proprietary technology to deliver investment and technology products aimed at providing users with a superior client experience and outcomes in a convenient and cost-effective manner.
We do this by creating AI research-based model portfolios in the form of investment baskets which not only tell investors what to buy, but also what to sell and what to replace them with. We have been building our AI platform since 2018 and have a track record of live investment baskets since April 2021.
Please tell us about the chatbot Vani, which is designed to make informed decisions, what made you develop this platform?
Our vision from day one was to democratise wealth management using AI to create better outcomes and level the playing field between DIY investors and institutions. The InvestorAi platform delivers on that, however, as we gained in popularity, more retail investors were interested in trying this and we felt that a conversational agent would help guide them on their journey.
Is Vani one of its kind in India, what are the key features? What is the market gap or opportunity your platform is addressing along with Vani?’
Equity market participation in India is growing, but access to guidance is harder to come by. We felt that the investment basket segment needed tools to help potential investors parse through the offerings and figure out which (if any) best suited them. Vani was born to provide education, help interested investors explore different investment baskets and most importantly, help explain to them what has happened at any time after they have invested.
Is Vani available only on the brokerage platform or is it available as an app for larger consumers?
We work through broker partners, so Vani is only available there – it is a very targeted agent, so needs to be placed where it can provide the most benefit to investors.
Where is InvestorAi present currently, what are the future plans in terms of expansion, any plans to raise funds and scaling the business?
We are headquartered in Bangalore with offices in Hyderabad and Mumbai. The India opportunity is massive both in terms of scale and growth potential. Following our Series A funding, we have seen increased demand for more products and this is keeping us fully occupied. By building for India, we are creating something that works at scale with low unit economics – this results in a price point that makes us very disruptive as we look at overseas markets.
Please explain the business model of InvestorAi.
For our investment baskets, we are regulated by SEBI as a Research Analyst and our products are available on a subscription basis. Alignment of interests is important to us and we have taken a partnership approach to distribution across all our products. This means we reach pre-qualified prospects through brokers, share revenue with them for distribution and also provide white label options.
Where is your startup based? Why do you think that is the best place for you?
We are Bangalore based and have offices elsewhere. We find the investment talent pool strongest in Mumbai and most of our partners are headquartered there. However, our technology, data science, operations, and client service talent comes from Bangalore and Hyderabad – these places have consistently delivered for us.
Who are your competitors and how are you better than them?
Although systematic AI investing for retail is in its early stages, the quant fund industry has been around for a while. The quant market currently has a 1% share of mutual funds in India versus 38% in the US, so assuming a flat market, then we should expect to see the share of wallet increase by close to 40x. With this backdrop, there is space for many more competitors.
At InvestorAi, we are very proud of our track record at signing partners and clients and delivering positive outcomes. As a result of feedback, we have increased our product range, which now includes intraday and MTF. The current market turbulence will stress test a number of the systematic providers and we expect to benefit from this.
Tell us the milestones or achievements that you accomplished in the past 12 months or so?
The most notable was closing our Series A round with Ashish Kacholia and Lucky Investments. We raised RS. 80cr in short order and have since doubled the number of broker partners and added to our products. The test for the next 12 months will be managing through volatile markets, however, this brings opportunity for well thought through and managed products.
What is your customer base and how much investment is done by customers on an average in a month or daily basis?
We have 15,000 users and growing who trade on average Rs 5L per month.
Lastly, can an AI recommendation platform be reliable than the fund managers who make recommendations based on various parameters?
There is a place for both – AI is stronger for shorter term decisions where crunching data provides an edge (no human manager can crunch a trillion investment features every day) whereas as humans we are used to making decisions with much less information. To get the most from AI, you need to adopt a systematic investing approach that ensures regular rebalancing. However, diversification is so important and I believe that everyone should have both systematic and fund/ETF investments in their portfolios.
