The #FinTech Industry is fast becoming crowded with new players emerging all the time. Much of this maybe has to do with the fact that with other Asset Classes reeling, Retail is kind of getting pushed to financial assets for bulk of their savings.
Once upon a time being a small stock broker was good enough to generate enough revenues to match the salary offered by most jobs in the Industry. That died when the Discount Brokers marched in.
Being a Mutual Fund Advisor was a very viable business opportunity but is now getting hit on 2 fronts - emergence of Direct & easy availability by firms such as Zerodha and PayTM as well as cutting down on Commissions by the fund houses.
Becoming a Registered Investment Advisor and Offering Stock Portfolios has been something that has been around for long but not scalable beyond a certain number of clients. Most such advisers are one man show operations.
Portfolio Management Companies are able to handle scale but fees are coming down in line with what we are seeing in the area of mutual funds. Add to that, number of firms with PMS license is seeing an explosion. Still a area where a nice boutique business can be build.
Finally there is Mutual Funds, the number of houses have gone down even as AUM exploded. Blame it on the high Capital Requirements + Scale is based on Performance. Tough for the first few years of operations.
And in between we have multiple content sites. Is a niche area though unless you basically give away the subscription for close to Free tough to get a large enough number of subscribers to make it really worthwhile
Way Ahead? While Independent Botique providers will always be there, I think the winner is someone who can provide the complete stack. Multiple players trying to complete the stack, interesting days ahead. #EOT
