Last weekend was spent in Pune…and almost wholly on investor education! On Saturday I attended a workshop by MoneyLife magazine – a personal finance magazine run by Debashis Basu and Sucheta Dalal – both veteran journalists (ok people born before 1970 are veterans for those who did not know :)). So obviously they know most of the things that an individual investor ought to know – to keep his/her money Safe and Invest it Smartly.

This program was at Yashada – a very nice learning center in Aundh, Pune. It was a packed auditorium and if the people took back whatever Debashis and Sucheta said, they would be well off if they implemented even half of it. Taking it to the next logical step of making the client actually do it is a challenge. Scaling it up to reach all the corners of India (Youtube!) and making it relevant for a larger cross section of the population will be a challenge that has to be addressed. Was personally happy to hear Debashis talk about ‘investing’ in real estate and gold – it could not have found him fans :). As time goes by will write more about Moneylife Foundation which is a CSR initiative for Debasis and Sucheta. Best of luck Sucheta, best of luck Debashis.

Sunday was a book reading session of ‘Retire Rich: Invest Rs. 40 a day’ also at Aundh, Pune. This was at Hotel Seasons and was organised by Twist n tales and the publisher Cnbc TV 18. Deepa Venkatraghvan read an important chapter and told people how to start early. Very good quality of crowd and very smart questions were asked. Convinced one woman why she should know more about money and her husband know more about cooking.

http://www.twistntales.blogspot.com/

Then I read from Deepa’s book – ‘What an agent will tell you, and you should not listen :). …more will follow..