Interview: Varun Fatehpuria, Founder & CEO, Daulat Finvest, a Tech Based Wealth Management Company

Interview: Varun Fatehpuria, Founder & CEO, Daulat Finvest, a Tech Based Wealth Management Company

Varun Fatehpuria is the Founder & CEO of Daulat Finvest. Prior to starting this, he spent 3 years co-leading a real-estate development firm in Kolkata. He started his professional career working with Bloomberg and then had the good fortune to work with Blackstone, a leading asset manager, in their real-estate private equity team in Hong Kong.

In an exclusive interview with Sugarmint, Varun Fatehpuria share his entrepreneurial journey and his inspiration behind turning into an entrepreneur.

Tell us a little about yourself

Varun Fatehpuria: I am a Finance professional by training with degrees earned from universities in Hong Kong and Europe.

I started my professional career working with Bloomberg and then had the good fortune to work with Blackstone, the world’s largest alternative asset management firm.

Both of these experiences gave me first-hand experience on how big institutions think about investing – the tools they use, and the people they hire.

And I think, the formative years of my career helped set a strong foundation and benchmark in my mind and get a gist of how things should be done.

Please tell us a little about your entrepreneurial journey

Varun Fatehpuria: I have been investing myself for many years now. It started as soon as I got my first pay cheque while working in Hong Kong.

Over time, that slowly moved on from my managing my small corpus to that of friends and family. I was struck by how many of my friends/family often invested based on what they read/heard and ended up with a random collection of investments with no clear goal or strategy.

March 2020 was a pivotal moment. The gyrations in the stock market were making everyone nervous. No one had seen anything like this before and they had no playbook to go to.

In moments like these, as an investor, one tries and look for some comfort. And ideally from someone who has a certain level of expertise and experience in it.

So I started getting calls from some of those friends and family who would ask me for advice as to how should they react to this situation, what should their portfolio look like, etc. And I think really at the point in time was when that idea for Daulat started to germinate.

At Daulat, our goal is to help Indians invest better and we do that by putting this whole investing thing into a lot more perspective and structure – which got lost in the last 18-24 months of the pandemic.

A lot of new investors got introduced to investing due to the rising trend of Do-It-Yourself investment apps.

But that also ended up acting as a double-edged sword. On one end, it helped get many people into the capital markets. But also, created a wrong set of notions and expectations in terms of how markets behave.

Investing is a time-taking process. It’s an entire discipline in and by itself. So it may be a bit misguided to think that it is something that can be done by lying down on the couch and hitting a few buttons here and there.

We had seen people, especially millennials, spending so much time trying to create that perfectly optimized portfolio on a lot of these DIY apps by selecting every top-performing fund and yet not being able to do a good job at it.

Daulat was brought into existence after validating these problems and filling the gap created by DIY apps.

We provide a superior investing experience to every Indian so that they can achieve their financial goals.

But we do not stop there. We also constantly monitor the portfolio to see if it’s on track to meet the investor’s goals.

Check-in with them every so often to make sure we’re working with their most updated information. And if they have any existing investments that may need a review, we also do that for them.

We want every Indian to be able to meet their financial goal and have a fair shot in their life. Providing financial independence to the youth of the country today can help them not only lead a better life for themselves but also for generations to come.

What service(s) or product(s) do you offer?

Varun Fatehpuria: At the heart of Daulat is our DMAS (Daulat Multi-Asset Solutions) portfolios. These personalized portfolios follow the art and science of investing and help you invest within a disciplined framework.

But that is not it – we also hand-hold and provide you advice/guidance through your investment journey to make sure you reach your financial goals at the earliest.

What is your mission and vision at the outset?

Varun Fatehpuria: Our mission is simple – to help Indians invest better. We want Indians to get out of the mindset that everything can be done on their own – which often comes at the expense of their invaluable time and energy.

The opportunity cost is simply too high to ignore. Instead, you should let experts handle it for you while you take a backseat and instead focus on improving/increasing your personal income sources which in turn can be infused in the right places to create real wealth over time.

Our vision is to be the best wealth manager for every Indian. We believe every Indian, with the right opportunity and guidance, can financially achieve whatever they want.

What was the inspiration behind turning an entrepreneur or Startup

Varun Fatehpuria: I’ve spent a fair share of my life in finance. And I have seen how the rich often have the upper hand in getting access to the best solutions and services while ordinary people are often left to fend for themselves.

This further increases the already massive wealth divide in our society. This problem also worsens because people do not know how to start investing as they get terrified and daunted by seeing the bazillion options.

Currently, only about ~3% of the country invests in the markets.This was what ultimately flamed me to step in and help more Indians start investing better.

Your success tips for young and aspiring entrepreneurs and startups

Varun Fatehpuria: The only way to build something of tangible value and worth is to be passionate about a problem.

While success stories of entrepreneurs may look exciting and tempting, it is often a story of over a decade of hard work.

Find a burning issue and give all that you can to make that a success. It may or may not work out, but at least you’d have learned a lot along the way.

Finally, what Finance has taught me very well is to focus on things you can control and let go of everything you can’t.

In investing, no one can accurately predict how the markets will behave. And therefore, the best way to counter that is to build your own solid investing framework and not get swayed by the constant chatter around you.

I think the same is true for your journey as an entrepreneur. Your ability to distinguish information from noise will help you find success.

Website: https://daulat.co.in

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