Birla Sun Life AMC's ambitious Investment Voyage "rathyatra" has been criss-crossing the country, connecting its senior management with distributors, giving them insights into how BSL manages their client money, interacting with them to pick up ground level feedback, and establishing a bond that often goes beyond business relationships. Sidharth Damani takes us through the contours of the Investment Voyage initiative and the pulse that he and Team BSL MF are picking up from distributors across the country.

WF: Your BSLAMC Investment Voyage program seems to have created a fair buzz within the distribution fraternity. What is this program, what is the objective, what has been the extent of distributor coverage?

Sidharth Damani: The BSLAMC Investment Voyage journey began for us in April 2014. The objective was very clear - we wanted to build thought leadership for BSLAMC in the equity space, and that is something that comes not from product promotion, but from thought provoking engagement with our distribution partners.

At BSLAMC we are committed to developing long-standing relationships with our distribution partners. We strongly believe in the money management capability of our investment managers. We also know that a strong sense of buy-in is very critical to investments. We therefore wanted to showcase our 3Ps - People, Processes and Performance - which are the cornerstones of long term success in this business.

We started off Investment Voyage with a day-long engagement in April 2014 with all our key distribution partners across all channels - Banks, NDs and

IFAs. This year, in April 2015, our second Investment Voyage was a much larger event, with over 600 participants, of which over 280 participants came into Mumbai from 96 unique locations across the country. Apart from our own senior management, we had a diverse set of speakers including Shri Nitin Gadkari, Honourable Union Cabinet Minister, Road Transport, Highways and Shipping, Government of India (recorded message), Samir Arora, Founder and Fund Manager Helios Capital, and Manish Chokhani, Advisor and Chairman, TPG Growth India among others.

In our experience as a Fund House, our 3Ps have contributed significantly towards our success. Our investment teams, who have imbibed this culture, continue to demonstrate the 3Cs - Clarity, Commitment and Consistency and we as a Sales Team take this message forward to our channel partners.

Our Investment Voyage engagement gave us the opportunity to showcase how the 3Cs help us as a money manager in delivering on the 3Ps, which in turn deliver long term success.

Building on the success of the Mumbai Event this year, we took our Investment Voyage across the country to our channel partners. Starting May 2015, with support from CEO, A. Balasubramanian and senior management, we visited over 15 cities across 6 states, delivering the Investment Voyage experience to over 2500 distributors and close to 600 investors. Cities visited include Trivandrum, Kochi, Pune, Patna, Bodhgaya, Ranchi, Guwahati, Siliguri, Ludhiana, Lucknow, Kanpur, Amritsar, Chandigarh, Kottayam, Thrissur, Calicut, Jalandhar, Ambala, Patiala, Panipat and Shimla among others.

This Voyage will continue and cover all other key markets across the country. We are trying, to the extent possible, to replicate the experience that 600 distributors had in our Mumbai event, in these cities where our senior management is travelling to. The session begins early evening with the Opening Address by our CEO, or Co-CIO Mahesh Patil or ManeeshDangi. It follows an audio-visual format, weaving in interactivity with recorded excerpts from our main Mumbai event, to give participants as close a feel as possible to the mega annual event. The evening concludes with a Musical Performance where we invite local talent to perform in front of investors and distributors. It's our small way of promoting talent in the field of performing arts, and giving them a spotlight to showcase their talent.

This experience also brings our senior management, much beyond the sales team, in touch with our distribution partners, and enables meaningful engagement across the company with our distribution partners. We have our CFO who goes for some of these events, our HR Head who goes for others - it's a 360 degree engagement across the entire company.

This is a clear testimony of the importance of Investment Voyage to us, and our commitment to our distributor partners which has also been acknowledged by our partners. When our Investment Voyage went to Siliguri for example, we were told by the distributors there that no AMC had come in with so many of their senior management ever before to their city, to meet and engage with distributors.

WF: What are some of the key insights you have picked up from your distribution partners in these extensive engagements that your senior management has had pan India?

Sidharth Damani: The biggest insight is the hunger for knowledge that our distribution partners have, across the country. There's a myth that distributors only chase returns - what we are seeing is a keenness to understand what goes into performance, to peep into the bonnet of the car and understand more about how the engine functions. There is a keen awareness among distributors about the need to understand more, in order to serve their investors better, and enhance the quality of their own client engagement.

There is a very clear understanding among distributors that knowledge enhancement leads to superior client engagement, which is the best way to increase wallet share from existing clients and to win new clients.

WF: What is the pulse you are picking up about mood of your distribution partners now? Is the excitement over the return of the retail investor to mutual funds scoring over worries on commission caps, service tax and direct plans - or are these worries bigger than the market opportunity in their view?

Sidharth Damani: The mood is mixed, for sure. Worries that you talk about are obviously there, at the same time, business volumes are growing, and that is indeed a welcome sign.

I think over the years, distributors have seen and coped with a lot of change, which I think has made them tougher and more resilient. There is also recognition that change is the only constant. So, whenever there is change, it is unsettling for some time for sure, but our distributors have demonstrated an ability over the years to deal effectively with change and emerge stronger.

As you rightly said, the return of the retail investor to mutual funds is really the big news. Take a look at the number of new SIPs being registered, take a look at equity flows, take a look at new folios being created - business momentum is picking up well in the retail segment. The investment experience has also been good. And, the best part of this is that 52% of new SIP registrations now are coming in from B-15 locations. That's really the market opportunity that is available to all of us - and that's really where all of us need to put our focus on.

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