Alum Ventures: Arthya Wealth & Investments – Gaurav Arora, PGP 2003

When you follow your passion or interest, it becomes a part of your personality, it was similar in the case of Mr. Gaurav Arora. He has been in the wealth management industry for close to two decades now and understands it in depth.

After a long corporate run, he decided that there was much more that could be done and that he had much to offer to his investors. Thus Arthya Wealth & Investments was born. With a simple but strong motto, Gaurav is determined to see his clients thrive as Arthya grows.

Please tell us something about yourself.

Born and brought up in a textiles business family, early in life I learnt the importance of knowing one’s product well, and knowing what it means/should mean to every different customer.

Post my PGDBM from IIM-Bangalore (2003), over the last 18 years in the Wealth management industry, and as one of the leading Chief Investment Officer for over a decade across marquee wealth management firms, I have applied this learning efficiently in the intelligent matching of ‘relevant investing’ for different kinds of investors.

This, along with strong people skills (again, a learning from my business days) have been great contributors to my professional success.

More here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gaurav-arora-288063b

‘Arthya’ is a very unique name for a company, any special meaning of the name and what does it signify?

The meaning of ‘Arthya’, according to the Wisdom Library, includes Fit & Proper, Appropriate, not deviating from the sense, Wise & Intelligent, True & Real;

Thus, a name that aptly defines the Values that form the bedrock of our Wealth advisory practice: Simple, Intelligent, Relevant & True.

Can you please tell us about your venture Arthya Wealth & Investments?

At Arthya Wealth, our mission is to provide simple, good quality investment advice, while avoiding the pitfalls that plague most large firms in the industry today because of sales & growth pressure, urge to compulsorily compete, unmanaged conflicts of interest and instability of employees.

We have built a comprehensive, high-quality, open-architecture-based Wealth Management and Investment Advisory platform, to cater to investors across the board: Individuals, Businesses/Corporate Treasuries, Family Offices, Trusts, etc. We are a SEBI registered Investment Adviser (RIA) and Portfolio Management Services provider (PMS).

Though investing is not too easy, it’s not rocket science either and need not be complicated. An unnecessarily complicated approach adversely affects results. At Arthya, we always look to offer uncomplicated, high-quality advice, and avoid complicated solutions unless critical/worthy.

 More here: www.arthyawealth.com

Arthya Wealth raises funding of $1M in pre-Series A round led by Bagla Group and Trenton Investments

What kind of services are offered at Arthya? What kind of clientele will benefit most from your services?

We excel in advising on investments across asset classes like Equity/ Fixed Income/ Early stage investing (Angel to Growth stage)/ Overseas investments/ Real Estate/ Insurance etc.

The focus is on being ‘solution-oriented’ rather than ‘product-oriented’.

We endeavour and hope to add value to all such investors who suffer from lack of proper investment advice, and have either not given investing enough due, or haven’t found the right advisors to help them do so, or worse, who don’t realise they are getting sub-optimal advice! Thus today, we have clients ranging from a few crores to 500Cr.+ networth and may have invested 50L to 50Cr+ through/with us.

We have several ‘first-time’ investors who have through us learnt the benefit of looking beyond FDs. We also have a few large Family Offices that are using our expertise to more efficiently navigate their multi-advisor relationships across the industry. We have several CXOs and top professionals as clients, and they value us as they get more intelligent and reliable advice from us in much lesser time as compared to other advisors.

“Arthya team’s primary promise is Simple, Sharp & Intelligent investment advice across all kinds of investment avenues. And I have seen them stand by it strongly and deliver efficiently, aptly enabled by Gaurav & team’s strong knowledge and pedigree. Their platform from onboarding and execution – to reporting, is simple, efficient and comprehensive. With nuanced planning and meticulous execution, they’ve significantly improved the efficiency my investments portfolio.”

– Saif Qureishi, Founder, CEO & MD, KRYFS Power Components Ltd.

How does Arthya differentiate itself from other firms in the market?

‘Being different’ is not the same as ‘making a difference’.

Our endeavour is to plug the quality gap in the last-mile delivery of judicious advice.

We monitor the urge to constantly offer ‘something new’ to clients – because this usually complicates client portfolios in the long run. And what’s more, ‘something new’ need not necessarily be ‘something good’.

We maintain sharp focus, and strong controls on the advisory process, with each and every investment transaction, approved centrally.

We educate our clients for them to be able to ask more questions. Questions like ‘Why so many funds?’, or ‘Why to invest in 10-year lock-in funds meant for institutional investors?’, or ‘What should be the justified return from this investment?’, etc. We don’t want our investors to feel the need to reach out to us to understand what’s going on in their portfolios all the time, as that’s a bad sign about the portfolio construct itself.

Carrying a long list of numerous investment options is not a sign of a better platform, it demonstrates lack of focus.

We follow the ‘Brain first’ approach. I have a strong pedigree as an Investment expert. Our PMS lead Bhaskar has 7 years of strong equity research pedigree with Crisil, followed by 4 years of experience managing ~2000cr AUM in listed equities. All our team members bring rich experience on board.    

More here: Arthya e-brochure

What prompted you to become an entrepreneur? How different is it from a corporate role?

Entrepreneurship has not been the need, but the solution to the need! To achieve what we believe strongly in, and to deliver true value to investors around, setting up a clean, true platform was a necessity – hence the path to entrepreneurship.

It’s just like answering ‘why MBA’? A good MBA course moulds a person in various ways and prepares them comprehensively for a professional life. Similarly, entrepreneurship makes one push the boundaries of all their capabilities, learnings, skills: both technical and human. It makes one ace multi-tasking, time-management, people-management, visualising, planning, etc in more ways than any corporate role can. For one, I have not filled so many To-do lists in my corporate life in total, than in the last one and half year as an entrepreneur! That itself says a lot I guess.

What motivates you?

I believe we are like ‘Financial Doctors’, and we are bound by an oath of our own, as we work with investors’ hard-earned money, and equally hard-earned trust – both easy to lose to bad decisions and wrong judgements! We believe in the theory of Larger Good, and that’s what motivates us as well.

What interests do you follow in your free time?

Music to soothe, and spending time with my 9-year-old son to keep my spirits high.

Any words of wisdom.

Look around enough, know that there are several lesser privileged; it will help us in being more ‘right’ & ‘conscientious’.