The Indian fund management industry (public and private market included) has crossed an AUM of $75 bn as we stand today ( as of the end of 2018) — this does not include the mutual fund industry which is 20x the number.However, the industry has very unique dynamics through its growth, whereby the information about the industry, the managers, qualitative and quantitative measures have continued to remain siloed and information asymmetry has been high. To give a historical context, the industry is very similar to where the US markets where in the late 90s.The AIF (Alternate Investment Fund) market alongside the PMS market (which constitutes the actively managed private and public markets, across asset classes) continues to grow at a healthy rate of 25%+ annualized — put another way, we are talking about an AUM of 1tr$ in slightly over 10 years. While the absolute number may be daunting, I personally believe that this is the natural course of markets, alongside the wealth creation that is happening on the ground.While the industry is growing with a renewed interest, the data that exists in the industry is minimal. For example, very few people who allocate money know the fund managers investing the funds, their past performance, qualitative information about the history of the fund and the manager, its performance across time periods, and a quantitative measure of the risk taken to generate the returns. While as an industry, we would require new pools of capital to come in, into India, it is important to understand the transparency and data that is necessary as the first step, before the capital makes its way.(For Example: if Stanford endowment has to have a dedicated India strategy, the data supporting it should make the case evident — unfortunately, we are far away from that today).Considering the problem we are looking to address, and the opportunity ahead of us, we have been working on the sidelines to take Fintuple — a platform ecosystem for funds — live, targeting 1Q 2019.
Through Fintuple, we aim to bring a data-driven approach to investing, aided by technology. We will always be a technology company at heart, taking on the fiduciary responsibility of bringing data and transparency to the asset management industry. At the very core, will be the fund managers, fund houses, Asset management companies who we will be representing to ensure the industry does the following :
On the investors' side, we want to enable this data through family offices, fund of funds, single-family offices, private banks and wealth management firms. Through our platform, we aim to ensure that the end investors have seamless data integration around their investments so that the industry has higher quality longer term Assets under Management.The founders of Fintuple have more than 35 years of experience across finance and technology and are supported by the largest asset managers in the country. Our team continues to grow and we are excited about the space we are working on.
