I must have met and spoken to about 3000 people about investing. These people I met in a ‘why you must invest, and that too in a SIP mode’ kind of an atmosphere. OBVIOUSLY does not include the 80-90,000 odd people whom I have trained / taught about investing. Also does not include about 1000 odd people who have interacted with me on the basis of my blog or my articles.

This is also apart from the 3-4k odd people who were my customers for equity – as a broker.

Many people listened to me, and of course many did not. One of the best relationships is a person who has a corpus – nor really big – of about Rs. 2 crores. What is amazing is that the start was with a Rs. 1500 SIP in 1999 -2000. He still continues to do one – even though he has just retired. He invested in Franklin India Bluechip, Hdfc top 200, Prudence – and stuck through thick and thin. That is the most amazing thing about this investor.

Coming to think of it, those people who did not put too much time in seeing what is happening in the economy, oil prices, who is in the government, Re-$ rates, quarterly performance of the fund, etc. etc. They just did their SIPs because they had money.

They were earning money, investing it, and spent for their needs. They did not say ‘I need money for….xyz reasons’ – thus they did not interrupt the compounding.

They increased the SIP amount when they could. Have a tech friend who would call and say ‘Subra I want to increase the SIP or do a fresh SIP – tell me where should it be.’ He would do some research but largely go by my choice into 3-4 fund houses. To be more accurate in 4-5 schemes.

They did not get perturbed during the 2003-2008 nor during the 2009 slump.

They did not call me in panic saying ‘arre the market has fallen 800 points in 2 days should I stop my SIP’ . No. No panic calls.

Those who called me were told “market will keep doing that, you have done the right thing, so chill” and they took this at face value.

How many such people? about 100 odd. Have they benefited by their investing? Yes for sure.

The 3 of the biggest beneficiaries of my hard push are peons / security guards doing SIPs as small as Rs. 500 to Rs. 2500 per month.

One of them said (during a real bad time) – (and he had no clue whether his investment amount was more or less than his investment made) – ‘Sir if I had that Rs. 500 I would have spent it – now at least it is safe somewhere and worth more than Rs. 12000’.

One peon told me “I never thought I will live to see Rs. 100,000 in my name, now thanks to you I have Rs. 300,000 in my folio”.

Makes your day, right?

and to think one Private Fund Manager took all his money from equity and put it in a debt fund about 3 years ago. He is still hopeful….lol….