Zen Nivesh: A New Beginning

Blood, Sweat, & Tears!

Blood, Sweat, & Tears!

I want you to keep these three words in your mind before you start reading this piece.

Investment advisory and investment education businesses are not very capital intensive. Yes, you need to pay for the rent, the salaries of all the team members, and some software and tools that help you with your research and content. But you can earn a decent profit if you do your work well, delight your customers, and put their interest above yours. And that too without investing any large amount of capital.

So, it’s an asset-light business.

But it requires three crucial things. I asked you to keep the same three things in mind initially.

And they are, as you already know:

Blood

Sweat

Tears

As we are starting a new journey at Zen Nivesh (Investment Education and investment advisory), I intend to share a few glimpses of our journey that will give you some sense of where we, Shivam, Harshal, and I, come from.

While reading our story, you may get a hint of blood boils, sweat on our foreheads, and tears rolling down our cheeks.

In our previous avatar (aka organization), we offered three major product/service offerings:

1. An online investor education program

2. A niche stock advisory service focusing only on less than 3000 Cr market cap companies

3. A passive model portfolio, where we propose a monthly SIP investment into a 20-stock diversified portfolio

Just 3 simple conversations with three different customers conveying the three emotions. Please note that all these conversations happened in our previous organization, before the start of Zen Nivesh.

Conversation 1: Dr Suvid Ingle

In our investment education initiative, we were fortunate to witness 8000+ investors learning about investing from our education platform. However, due to some reasons, we had to leave the organization. This is what we wrote to the existing members last month.

There were a few queries, but mostly, everyone was fine with it. They had seen us in the last four years and wanted to give us another chance. Thank you once again to all of you. But one interesting conversation with Dr. Suvid Ingle blew our minds.

He said:

“Forget about what you guys are going to offer. Tell me how I can help you in this transitionary phase. I bet on you guys when you had no track record. It is because I could sense that you guys are genuine, transparent, and full of integrity. I have seen you for the last 4 years. I do not need any more validation. Wish you all the best.”

Thank you, Dr Suvid. This means a lot to Shivam, Harshal, and me. We feel proud and scared at the same time when you trust us so much. However, we will try our best never to disappoint you.

Conversation 2: Unsatisfied customer

This event happened a couple of months after we launched our microcap (less than 3000 Cr market cap) stock-advisory services in the year 2023. We had recommended 3-4 stocks already. One gentleman was not happy with our latest pick. He said:

“The stock that you have recommended is trading at obscene valuation based on TTM earnings. I don’t think you guys have any sense of valuation. You just look at emerging stories and throw darts at them. Please refund my subscription money. I do not intend to continue with you guys.”

While we were all disheartened by this remark, we tried our best to explain it to him. We said:

“This is a special case. This business has got a very large order after a long time. It has the capability and capacity to execute it in time. Hence, we need to just look one year ahead and not be fixated at TTM earnings.”

But he had already made up his mind. All these discussions were happening in a common group where all our other subscribers were also present.

Hence, we let him go. We refunded the money immediately so that he would be satisfied.

It doesn’t matter how the stock performed. What matters is that our existing members witnessed our agility in resolving the issue and keeping the customer’s interest in mind.

Conversation 3: A delighted stock SIP customer, Mr. N.K

When we onboard any new member for any of our services, we try to keep the expectations reasonable for the member as much as possible. For us, it is always about promising less and delivering more. If you wake me up at 2 am and ask me to speak about the stock SIP portfolio, the odds are high that I will not miss telling you:

“Don’t expect a fantastic return over the long term. 3-4% outperformance over NIFTY in the long run is my target, but I may not achieve it.”

But one SIP customer (Mr. N.K.) who was investing diligently based on our advice, remarked this after 2 years:

“Since you down-sold yourself so much, mentally, I had settled for a much lower return with your stock SIP advisory portfolio. I never thought the investment returns would be so decent.”

That is when we told him:

“This return is due to a combination of three things- market buoyancy, our stock spiking skills, and luck. We don’t know which has a higher role to play. But we know that out of three things, only one is in our control. Remember, if the last two years were very good, the next two years can surprise us on the downside. So, don’t celebrate yet.”

The conversation took place in August 2024. Today, the market has gone down a lot from those levels, and our portfolio has also seen its impact. But because we set the right expectations beforehand, Mr. N.K. is diligently doing the SIPs.

That is it.

Three conversations with our three valued customers, providing you a glimpse of how we operate with honesty and integrity in a universe where lots of unregistered fraudsters misguide the gullible retail and HNI investors.

I will end by borrowing a line from a wise man. This wise man is the promoter of a listed agrochemical company in India. I had the chance to interview him on my podcast. I am just rephrasing his words to suit our story at Zen Nivesh here:

“Humari company nayi zarur hai but humlog bahut purane hai. Ek mauka aur dijiye hume.”

Translation: Our company is new but we have a lot of experience in this field. Please give us one more chance.

Thank you for all your support. We will need it in the time to come.