Market Simplified was excited to partner with industry body FICCI at their 7th Annual Capital Markets Convention on April 20th 2010 in Mumbai at the Grand Hyatt with Venkat, CEO – Market Simplified invited to be a panelist on a discussion seeking to find ways and means to increase the retail participation into the capital markets in India.

Industry leaders came about highlighting the existing situation with the capital markets industry in India and various other possibilities to aim a level of 3X market penetration by 2020.

State of the Indian Capital Markets was summarized as :

  • Around 85% of the turnover in markets comes from only 5 cities in India.
  • India has a savings rate of around 30% , one the highest across the globe.
  • There are about 550 Million Mobile users.
  • There are about 80 Million Internet users
  • Around 15 million direct investors in Capital Markets going by the record of 15 million existing tradable accounts.
  • Market Capitalization of $1.120 Billion
  • There are 2100 Brokers and 200,000 Trading Terminals
  • There are about 3 Million people selling Insurance in India.

Key Questions for future were:

  1. How does India increase this 200,000 trading terminals to 1 million in the next 10 yrs?
  2. Is aiming for 3x before 2020 an extremely modest target?
  3. How do we spur this retail participation and 100% inclusion?

The most common solution to this challenge or answers to the above question discussed were:

  • To find an affordable way to acquire more clients and provide greater accessibility to the capital markets.
  • To educate the potential investor on the markets and build trust and confidence.

As agreed by most present, was that, mobile will eventually turn out to be the most effective, affordable and convenient tool to achieve this. Not only will it help in achieving the penetration levels so desired, the value add that it shall provide in terms of accessibility to important information, empowerment to the self directed investor by giving them anytime action-ability and building of confidence amongst investors, among others, will ultimately improve the health of one’s portfolio and serve as a boon in this volatility prone industry.

Among the panelists, there was also More >