The Sweet Spot

Tuesday, June 23, 2020

LET'S GET PHYGITAL

The recent WFH has emphasised the need to transact digitally. However recent market volatility has also emphasised the need for advice while investing. This is especially true for the millions of new investors who have entered the markets and are susceptible to the dangers of trading without advice. An extreme case in point is here

As a full service broker, Motilal Oswal differentiates itself by providing not just cutting edge digital trading through its habit sensitive separate Investor & Trader apps ( see film here); it also provides an advisor on call to provide research and advise across the whole suite of investing products. The advisor acts as not just as a market expert decoding reams of information into actionable investing, he/she also acts as a sounding board and counselor- especially important during volatile markets where emotions can get the better of anyone.

The Motilal Oswal investing experience is available on Click & Call. Not just Digital. Not just Physical. But the best of both worlds. We call this a PHYGITAL investing experience.

But isn't Physical experience reducing in terms of customer requirements; especially in lockdown? Why can't all this be done through increasingly intelligent digital platforms ? Firstly when we say 'Physical' it means the convenience of an advisor available on phone/video chat. If you observe consumer buying behaviour across categories, we see increasing adoption of the PHYGITAL model. This is especially true for high value items and where there is a lack of standardisation and need for a personalised experience. Like your hard earned investments where needs are not just a rational( data/analysis/convenience) but emotional (Greed & Fear ) as well.

You may buy a mobilephone online but when buying a car you research digitally but experience a test drive physically. Both digital wallets as well as cash are considered essentials. Online groceries apps offer VFM and convenience but you also visit grocers to purchase fresh vegetables. Even while communicating; while emails and messages are the norm; we still do pick up the phone and speak to our loved ones.

The combination Digital transactional convenience with the customisation/relaibility of the Physical experience is what makes PHYGITAL relevant even in today's rapidly changing era. We have noticed this in investing where advisors have spoken to clients and counselled them to stay invested even when markets were crashing in March 2020 ( benefits are being reaped now with the markets rebounding). Or when digital only platforms experienced outages and downtime on high volume F&O expiry day while the on-call advisor was available to place an important trade reliably.

Motilal Oswal is one of the few brokers to offer a truly PHYGITAL experience. This is a result of the technology backbone we have built and the large number of advisors available on call through our branch and business partner advisory desks.

To make the PHYGITAL proposition come alive, we have created a campaign across touchpoints on the benefits of PHYGITAL investing experience. The campaign has been created by the in-house MOFSL creative team.

Besides advertising; we have also tried to impart knowledge about PHYGITAL investing in various media ( example here )

Have a look

DIGITAL MEDIA

SOCIAL MEDIA

FOLLOW UP CAMPAIGN

Here is some initial media coverage on the initiative

Sunday, June 21, 2020

The Minimalist Investor

Minimalism as a trend is gaining increasing precedence.

The original poster child for minimalism was Apple with its 'less is more' products, software and user experience. This article explains their inspiration in more detail

However, there's a lot more to minimalism than what meets the iPhone.

Minimalism as a philosophy has been there for time immemorial. Ancient spirituality including Buddhist , Hindu and many others have suggested a minimalist lifestyle. With all the complexity and uncertainty around us currently, the Minimalist trend has gained even more precedence; especially among Millenials.

This can be applied to investing as well.

Mutual funds have over 10 categories in equity and debt each and selecting the right category of a mutual fund can be more than difficult. If investors think equity is complicated - debt is even more cumbersome and hard to understand. The time is ripe to practice minimalism in investing. Index Funds are a category that help investors practice a minimalist approach to investing. They are simple, frugal and help create wealth in the long term. You do not need to select or balance fancy and complex portfolios. Since they buy the Index, you do not need to get into the nitty-gritties of fund manager selection. Also, since they do not charge fund manager fees, they are more economical in terms of costs. And it has been proven that over a period of time ,Index Investing provides returns without having to worry about transient performance.

Just a combination of 2-3 Index Funds is good enough for your equity investing needs. As one of the pioneers of Index Investing in India, Motilal Oswal Mutual Fund has created a campaign to educate investors about the emerging Index Investing category by using the concept of Minimalist Investing.

The look , tone and content of the campaign is ; well minimalist. Have a look.

Here's some initial media coverage of the campaign too

Brand Equity

Promoting index funds, Motilal Oswal AMC launches campaign

Dailyhunt

Motilal Oswal AMC launches 'The Minimalist Investor' Campaign

Medianews4u

Motilal Oswal AMC launches ‘The Minimalist Investor’ Campaign

Adgully

Motilal Oswal AMC launches 'The Minimalist Investor’ Campaign

Mediabrief

Motilal Oswal AMC launches ‘The Minimalist Investor’ campaign

Wednesday, April 8, 2020

MOTILAL OSWAL S&P 500 INDEX FUND

When it comes to investing, India's share of global market cap is around 2%. It hence makes sense to start investing in international markets as well. https://www.livemint.com/market/stock-market-news/india-sees-least-growth-in-m-cap-among-top-10-global-markets-11578332101530.html

After the successful NASDAQ 100 ETF and Fund of Funds that was one of the best performing international funds in India in recent years, we launched the big daddy of them all . The S&P 500 is one of the worlds oldest indexes with a 63 year track record ( and even longer history), the worlds largest, consists of over 80% of the US stock market by market cap and consists of many marquee brands that you and I use everyday. It is these facts that we have tried to show in the NFO campaign, which incidentally has been totally conceived and executed from home during the COVID19 lockdown

Here is the TV ad and digital campaigns for the NFO; all of which have been executed while working from home during COVID19 lockdown

UPDATE

Motilal Oswal Asset Management Company (MOAMC) successfully completed the NFO of the Motilal Oswal S&P 500 Index Fund, an open ended scheme replicating/tracking S&P 500 Index. It’s an Index fund that helps investors invest in the world’s largest brands in the world’s largest Index – the S&P 500 Index. This was probably for the first time in India that a mutual fund NFO has been marketed and transacted exclusively through digital modes of transaction.

For this NFO, besides the company website and app, investments have been received through various intermediaries transacting on the BSE, NSE, MFU platforms and various other leading digital investing platforms such as Motilal Oswal, ICICIDirect.com, IIFL Securities, HDFC Securities, PaytmMoney, Groww, Zerodha Coin, Kuvera and others.

While the AMC had filed for regulatory approvals in January 2020, approvals were received amidst the COVID 19 crisis and hence all marketing, investor and distributor communication, engagement as well as transactions were executed digitally while Working From Home

Thursday, March 26, 2020

STAY THE COURSE

All was going well for Indian Markets until early March 2020, while the broader indices like Nifty 50 and Sensex were making new highs in last 18-24 months, beginning September 2019 until early March’20 the rally started to extend beyond top 15-20 stocks on to a lot of quality midcap and small cap companies as well. This was all backed by very strong inflows from FII and relatively steady positive flows from DIIs too.

And then came Carona/ COVID19

As the spread of the virus started to build, global markets started to correct violently with almost all major global indices correcting in the range of 35-40%. Indian markets too corrected very sharply and rather quickly with continuous selling from FIIs on a daily basis to the extent of 3000-4000 cr. All kind of companies including bluest of blue chips fell down anywhere in range of 25%-50%. Indian market cap to GDP went down from 70% to 55% (right now 49% source MOFSL) and Nifty valuations (P/E) corrected from about 28 times to 17 times. Trillions of dollars of wealth (world market cap is down ~20tn USD) has been eroded globally so far and any bottoming out of the markets is becoming very difficult to predict. It is quite likely that till such time news around any positive developments emerge on further spread of COVID 19, the markets will remain extremely volatile and could swing 5-10% either side on daily basis.

This sharp , sudden fall spooked investors. In times like this it is important to engage with and assure investors.

It is natural for them to stop believing in equities and fund houses at these times. But our request is to even if you don’t want to invest now, don’t redeem. In equity markets - Downs are temporary. Ups are permanent.

We created a digital film to present this thought. Also supported by data on other digital media

The theme of telling people to stay the course with their investments was also presented in social media through a campaign using relevant and topical quotes under the overall idea : " KEEP THE FAITH IN EQUITY"

Monday, February 24, 2020

Mudmudke na dekh mudmudke...

In life , we spend a lot of time reminiscing about what we did or what might have been. While its good to dwell upon or reminisce once in a while, progress is made in looking ahead. Continuously looking backward will not move you forward.

In investing as in life, many investors keep looking at past performance to take future course of action. It is this insight that we have taken in our latest educational campaign on investing behaviour for MOAMC . In investing , if you keep looking backward, you can't move forward. The idea uses this insight to show people who continuously look backward not able to move ahead.

The digital campaign consists of a film and digital/social media posts

Have a look