Sidhavelayutham M: The Leader Behind Alice Blue Financial Services
We have heard about the name Alice, (Alice in Wonderland). Well!! It is the germanic word meaning “of noble rank” and the color blue indicates “the color of clear sky when the sun shines”.The main idea of naming this company “ALICE BLUE” is to provide trust and offer different services to the consumers in a noble way (without buffering them).
THE ORGANISATION
Alice Blue is a discount
broker platform that was established in December 2006 in Chennai. They later
moved the Head Office to Bengaluru. Today they have a PAN India presence with
20 branches across 16 cities. They manage over 4 lakh customers now. They offer
a platform to trade equities, derivatives, commodities, currencies, mutual
funds, and IPOs. Alice Blue has dreams to offer a one-stop solution for
customers for all their investment needs. The name Alice Blue originates from
the Greek word for truth while Blue is always the color of trust and
dependability. So they seek to offer dependable brokerage services to the
customers at the lowest industry rates.
HEAD OF THE COMPANY
Mr. Sidhuvelayutham M, the
CEO of the company. He has a Management of Finance degree from the Indian
Finance Institute and a Master’s from IIM Bangalore. He has overall
responsibility for operations and new product development. He has a background
in analytics and strategic planning which he applies to the business while
looking out for disruptive concepts and adapting new technologies ahead of the
competition. He has an able team of seasoned professionals from the industry to
support him.They have been with the company for over a decade and have helped
to supercharge the growth, strategy, finance, and operations. They moved to a
paperless mode in 2017 with online customer onboarding via Aadhaar and eKYC
along with digital payments. This helped the company to scale up exponentially.
THE CLIENTS
They have over 4 lakh
customers from all over India who have opened their trading accounts with Alice
Blue. They cater to the trading and investor community in India by offering
them a discount brokerage platform for trading in equities, derivatives,
currencies, commodities, IPOs, and Mutual Funds. They have several business
partners who use the proprietary platform to run their trading businesses.
ABOUT DOMAIN
The main motive of the
company is to find the solution for the basic emanation of the merchant and
shareholders in the Stock market in the locution of price transparency,
customer support, and dependency. They wanted to offer them a smooth experience
on a broking platform that offers low flat rates for trading and zero brokerage
for equity purchases in cash. The idea was to make trading pleasing to
individuals and develop an awareness of the equity cult among the younger
generation.They firmly believe that the customer comes first. Staying true to
the brand promise and making investing and trading simple and rewarding, They
continue to find ways to delight their customers. Through their online
platforms and mobile applications, they empower retail investors and
high-volume traders to do it themselves. In addition, they offer courses and
products in the trade school and trade store to support the traders for more
efficient trading. However, at Alice Blue, they charge a flat fee of Rs 15 per
trade. They provide free APIs to clients for order placements in milliseconds,
live OI data, and reliable web sockets which have helped them improve their
reach.They focus on continuous improvement in technology so that they can
provide a glitch-free trading platform to their clients. As far as customer
issue resolution is concerned, their turnaround time is around 30 mins to an
hour at most. They offer a paperless account opening process that is swift,
simple, and hassle-free.
FUTURE GOAL
They wish to be India’s
preferred discount broker. Their aim is to have over 1 million derivative
trading accounts by 2025. They wish to reduce transaction costs further while
continuing to provide the best trading platform.They wish to build an
interconnected universe of products and services, learning materials, trading
strategies, and suggestions under one roof. They aim to reduce ticket response
time to minutes from the current 1 hour during working time. The response
window opens around the clock.
CHALLENGES FACED DURING LOCKDOWN
Since Alice Blue is an
online trading platform, they didn’t face too much of a challenge during the
pandemic. They managed to have employees working from home. In fact during the
lockdown, With more people stuck at home, they opened more trading accounts
than usual. This was a by-product of the lockdown which forced people to work
from home. The equity cult has grown in India during the pandemic and
youngsters are taking a keen interest.
IMMERSIVE TECHNOLOGY
As they say, data is the
new oil or gold. New immersive technologies are helping to create better
customer experiences. The more information they gather about customer behavior
and preferences using the CSAT survey helps them to fine-tune their offerings
to design tailored solutions for their customers based on the most used
services and products. They keep upgrading our versions so that customers get
the maximum benefit.
BIGGEST OBSTACLES
The customer of today is
very aware as the world has become digital and interconnected, In such an
environment, customers are spoilt for choice. If you don’t provide them with
what they are looking for, they will just move on to someone who does. Since
there is no logistical constraint anymore, brands and businesses have to be
aware of changing customer needs and preferences and keep tailoring their
offerings accordingly. Collecting customer data and Analyzing it regularly is
the biggest challenge but you can turn the problem on its head and say it is
the solution as well.
DIGITAL CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE JOURNEY
The
CEO stated that “We have focused on building our brand image through social
media campaigns, word-of-mouth referrals, client referrals, partner referrals,
Public Relations, Influencer marketing, and other brand-building activities.
Dealing
with aware customers who are conscious of what they are paying for needs to be
done with care. Today’s customers have access to a lot of information in the
public domain and you cannot get away if you provide a shoddy experience. It is
therefore extremely important for brands to maintain their image by providing a
complaint-free experience to customers. Earning the loyalty of customers and
retaining them is a challenge that every brand needs to rise to. That is the
only way to thrive in this digital world”.
GRATIFYING ABOUT THE JOB
Mr. Sidhuvelayutham stated
that he has always been an advocate of discounted brokerage and an excellent
trading platform that provides a pleasant experience to the trading community.
Customer delight and positive reviews are the most rewarding thing about this
industry. Their industry is all about money and if they can help traders earn
better by offering them the most economical platform.
ABOUT SUCCESS
Success is an ever-evolving
term and its definition keeps changing as you move along your entrepreneurial
journey. There are always more things to do and more milestones to achieve.
Success is when you make your dreams come true by following your passion. Happy
customers are how I would define success. If you can keep your customers happy,
success is bound to follow.
FUTURE ENDEAVORS
They have recently upgraded
to the ANT Moi 2.0 trading platform and retained the features most liked by
users. They are focused on continuous improvement in technology to provide
customers with a hassle-free experience by providing smarter, more intuitive,
powerful, and consistent service. The CEO is looking forward to moving closer
to the 2025 goal of 1 million derivative traders through innovation and
technology. Other goals include building value for customers, fortifying the support
team, and entering into business collaborations.
CHALLENGES TO OVERCOME
Good leaders know how to
respond to the demands of the role and the demands of their team. They know and
actively seek to bring out the best qualities of the people they lead. Building
a strong team is easier when you know the values and goals of each individual,
as well as what they need from you as their leader. We groom our people and we
run a lot of programs on leadership. If a person is ready to take
responsibility, we give him the responsibility. You have to have confidence in
your people. You need to take a bet that this person will be able to perform.
And, then we keep working on the process of mentoring and training. In our
organization, we hire at the entry level and keep on promoting them without any
lateral hiring.
IDEAS TO DEAL WITH CYBER THREATS
Alice Blue was struggling
with regular Distributed Denial of Service attacks which used to cause outages
at least twice a month and compromised our performance as well. They moved to
Cloudflare and added Argo Smart Routing which has helped us mitigate these
attacks and improve the performance of the platform. They were ever vigilant
against cyber security attacks because a lot of money and customer data is at
stake. Given our nature of work, it is extremely critical to maintain the
safety of our systems and prevent any attacks.
CEO’S RECOMMENDATIONS
He would recommend a
migration to the cloud as that is the latest and most competent technology
available. It is flexible and you can choose a multi-cloud environment to meet
different business requirements. Since this is a pay-as-you-use service, it is
quite efficient for new enterprises. Since enterprises are moving towards
digital transformation, it makes sense to invest in a multi-cloud environment
that provides access to faster, safer, and more efficient technology.
OBJECTIVES
They are planning to enter
into other business segments to offer customers a one-stop shop for all their
trading and investment needs across asset classes.
ADVICE TO THE READERS
He mentioned “Whatever you
do, do it with passion, half-hearted measures will not take you anywhere.
Before beginning your investment journey, ask yourself why you are investing.
If you know why you are investing, you can easily figure out where to invest.
When you are investing, Remember that volatility is your best friend. Accept
and build it in your portfolio. If there was no volatility, there would be no
opportunity.
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