iTrust.in is an independent financial supermarket and financial advisor focusing on the mass-affluent market and unlike several other startups in this space, it uses a hybrid online and offline model.
iTrust’s mission statement says it all:
“To help Indian families get rich.”
iTrust helps consumers with advice on buying financial products, managing finances etc; and offers advice and services in:
- Real Estate
- Financial Planning
- Loans
- Tax Planning
- Mutual Funds and Investments
- Insurance
One can use the website to compare financial products like personal loans, insurance etc.
Before we review the product, lets look at the market opportunity;
Typical Problem Faced by Indian Consumers
Customers are confused with too many products flooding the market and intimidated by the jargon used in the financial services industry.
- High search costs in getting information and deals
- Weak or low bargaining power when buying from large companies
- Constant worry about making the wrong decision
The majority of consumers have no clue about the product and what they are being pushed into. Problem is only rising in severity as new products are introduced every day, and the general wealth levels are rising in society, so a lot more personal wealth needs to be managed.
Size of the Problem
Personal financial services is still a young industry in India. Almost all Indians have basic needs of buying a house, getting their family protected, investing enough to pay for their kids’ education/wedding, and planning for their retirement. Yet, these are the very areas that most Indian consumers face a challenge in understanding.
There are over 20 million Indians who fall into the target market for personal financial services.
iTrust’s Approach
iTrust is a financial intermediary that helps customers overcome high search costs in buying financial products and mitigate the lack of a bargaining power by providing customers with industry leading expertise and negotiating capabilities with the product manufacturers.
Apart from focusing on all aspects of personal finance whether its loans, buying assets, investing in funds or getting a tax return or a will made, iTrust’s significant difference is the authority they are building in their space.
- 8 month TV show on Zee Business last year, “Money Guru Special”
- Weekly contributors to Economic Times, Indian Express and other personal finance magazines
- Content on iTrust.in on a weekly basis on practical solutions to problems that customers face
I have covered RateKhoj and Ecompare earlier, but what makes iTrust an interesting startup is their focus on offline channels.
The company has also built a proprietary Financial Planning Engine to create customized financial plans, uniquely suited for a customers’ special needs and risk profile.
Currently, iTrust is based in NCR, but has plans to open offices in the 28 Indian cities. Although the start-up is about a year old, its has built a team of over 125 people, including a 15 person technology team. Its currently offering its services to 32 MNCs in the NCR area with an employee base of over 25,000 middle class families.
Founders
The founders of iTrust are Dhruv Agarwala and Kartik Varma (who writes golden posts @ pluGGd.in), classmates from Harvard Business School.
Couple of Feedbacks
- The entire form filling process is tedious, boring (everything related to finance is!) and most importantly, one gets just a set of text after submitting all the details. Think of an interesting way (take a pick from glassdoor) and create interesting qns (wizard will work) that keeps the user pluggd to the qns (personalized report at the end of the entire transaction helps a user understand what he/she needs to do).
- Give away free downloadable tools and be seasonal – right now, it’s the time of filing IT returns – so have QnA section where readers can ask questions (this will help a lot from SEO perspective as well)
- The entire comparison flow needs to be interactive – right now, a comparison for house loan needs couple of clicks to get to the actual result.
Somehow, a “trusted” advisor feel isn’t there in the system. A system like this should show up things which one is not really looking for outrightly – for e.g. cheapest loan, offers etc – increases the stickiness of the product.
iTrust was recently profiled in the Financial Times, a leading global business and finance newspaper, as being at the forefront of educating Indian consumers about what to do with their money.
What’s your take on iTrust?
Disclosure: iTrust is one of the sponsors. Not adding this in the post, since post is time independent (while sponsors aren’t)
Not a great UI also broken in Firefox but an interesting space to be in will be competing with personalfn who have a rediff tie in but besides them there doesn’t seem to have too much competition in this space
@Ashish: Thanks for the profile.
http://www.itrust.in/forum/forums/list.page
Above is the link to the Q&A forum which we soft launched just a few days back. In order to ensure that there are genuine questions being asked by real users, we have a registration process, but it takes only 1 minute to create your account.
Any one can ask questions, be they topical ones say related to the current tax season, or any other on any personal financial product. Our qualified tax accountants, and product experts answer each question.
@Abhishek: Thanks for the feedback. Please let us know the links that are broken and we will fix them. we are also using Firefox, but seem to be having no problem with the site.
Personalfn is a great company and we hope that we can meet the standards set by them.
Checked the site.
As someone who bothers abt user exp,this site is definitely clear comp to personalfn or moneyctrl.That ‘does’ make a diff.
But how come there’s no rss feeds?I guess rss feeds do contribute to the traffic.
I am wondering abt the b model.How do you guys make money w/o ads?
Broken Link I came across:
http://www.itrust.in/tax-planning/article.action/Top-Misconceptions-About-Taxes-India
You could do a thorough check using many online tools.
http://validator.w3.org/checklink
@Sridhar: Greetings and thanks for the feedback (and the broken link). We will have RSS feeds shortly.
As for our business model, as you observed, we don’t ads right now. We don’t want to be even seen as having a conflict of interest that might dilute our proposition as an independent advisor fighting for the individual customer, rather than be a distributor who is a pawn of the product manufacturer. Over time, as the industry matures a little, we too might have to adapt our plans.
We earn revenues on broker commissions and an advisory fee.
How the goin to operrate thr distribution Channel
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Interesting site and service offerings – quite informative to laymen. Probably having a blog – simillar to the one Mr Ajit Dayal of Quantum services has and I guess its called as Honest truth – may help later-on. In building up of loyal customer base.
The other feature which I liked in quantum services is their online tracking tool – somethign like portfolio manager for MFs brougth through them.
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Thanks for sharing this blog.iTrust is leading financial provider in financial market.It provides personal loans, home loans,financial planning,Mutual Funds and Investments and many more….
I liked the various articles cross asset classes available on the website.Moreover the MF comparators and sample Financial plans are quite an eye opener for people who are kind of totally unaware of the financial requirements they might face in the future. The sample financial plans do provide a deep insight to the kind of financial responsibility a person needs to have.I think moving forward in time people will certainly feel the need to have a financial plan.
Good to see such ventures. Came across another great site http://www.investmentyogi.com/ which are doing a lot of financial planning, tax planning, content creation stuff but they are not selling any products. I like that approach.
I like PersonalFN.com
Their research on Mutual Fund is amazing and is very powerful. Their recommendation about the investment on Mutual fund is also great. I always like to their advice for my Investments specially on Mutual Funds, and even their advice about the investment has worked well for me, and i got a good ROI on my investments last year.
Thanks to PersonalFN.