Rahul Bhatia – I am sure you know who is this famous man. He came visiting. He had heard about me being an Investment Consultant.

RB: Hi Subramoney…I was asked to meet you..

Me: Welcome sir. One small change, I will guide you, but you will have to get a Registered Investment Adviser to guide you on how to do asset allocation, etc. and an MFD to do your investing.

RB: I don’t want to pay too much as fees…etc.

Me: Sir this is the cheapest fund that you can get..

RB: wow….like the airline I run..

Me: Oh yes sir, somewhat like that.

RB: how much can I invest

Me: wait a minute sir. You wish to invest in a large cap fund or a small cap fund or in a mid-cap fund or a fund which invests in all this..?

RB: i thought you were supposed to tell me this…

Me: sir an RIA will tell you what you should do with your money.He will charge you a fee. An MFD will invest your money and he will be paid a fee from your investing. Obviously you will not see the cash go from your hand…but it will be like money evaporating.

RB: this is too much. Our industry does not do such a thing…

Me: I know

RB: so what should I do? You should invest in a few large cap, mid cap and small cap funds you mean?

Me: that is not a bad way to go about that. None of us can pick a future winner, so invest in about 29 funds = some will surely do well, if just by chance.

RB: that will be expensive. Will be able to exit a fund which is not doing well?

Me: Sir our industry is better. If you invest and don’t like you can exit and will get a refund.

RB: Our industry charges a small penalty for cancelling…like 100%…

Me: Imagine sir, if you invest Rs. 50L in a liquid fund, you can get the whole money back..in a day or 3.

RB: In our industry even if you buy a Rs. 190,000 ticket, the refund has to be NIL…that is how we operate. So Subra how does the MF industry make money?

Me: Sir our most profitable company does not pay any commission to its sales teams. Just like your industry…the middleman has been eliminated.

RB: Oh, I did not know that. We never had agents

Me: No sir. You had, and you were paying 8% commission. In case of the MF industry not long ago (1992) even the US was paying 8% upfront sales commission and 1% trailing fees on an annual basis.

Rb: we don’t even recruit men in the Inflight services team – girls are lighter so we save on fuel.

Me: I am a happy shareholder who bought your share at Rs. 800 and now at 1830, I sold off some shares.

RB: Oh..you should not have sold. We have some amazing new money making ideas.

Me: will you please share…I just met Vistara and they are doing well…too and so is SJ

RB: we are now thinking of charging for the ladder at the aircraft..you see some passengers think that they can jump…so they may be able to save money.

Me: Oh my God. Do you have any more ideas?

RB: yes. We are planning to make the tickets very cheap if people book 4 months in advance.

Me: How will you make money?

RB: Lol…30% of our revenues is from ticket cancellation..we will prosper.

Me: Does your regulator not tell you what you can charge or cancellation charges…?

RB: No. We don’t have a regulator.

Me: You are very lucky. I can give you one more idea…

RB: what’s that?

Me: the mutual funds HAVE to spend a lot of money doing “Investment Awareness Program” and they do not have enough sources.

RB: So if I train my staff to do the IAP …you mean…they

Me: You are so smart. Of course..now imagine if you are paid Rs. 1000 per pax, each flight can get you Rs. 1.8L per flight.

RB: Any other idea?

Me: Actually you could make a similar offer to the life insurance industry…that will mean another Rs. 1.8L per flight.

RB: Wow…and how should I market it…

Me: don’t bother, it is a captive audience. You have another amazing advantage…Sebi or its agents can’t come to see if you are doing it correctly.

Rb: whom should I meet for this…

Me: …………soch lo….