“Angel One has expanded its client base to 9.64 mn on the back of customer delight”

Angel One Ltd (formerly known as Angel Broking Ltd) is the largest listed retail stock broking house in India in terms of active clients on NSE. Angel One is a technology-led financial services company providing broking and advisory services, margin funding, loans against shares, and distribution of third-party financial products to its clients.

The use of Artificial intelligence and Machine learning has helped the company to create a superior digital experience. The company has built a host of digital properties like Angel One Mobile App, Angel BEE Mobile App, ‘ARQ Prime’ a rule-based investment engine, ‘SmartAPI’ a free-to-integrate API platform, ‘Smart Money’ an investor education platform, ‘SmartStore’ a marketplace for fintech products, learning platform and social forums for 7+ million clients. Technology has always been at the heart of all their operations. The stellar performance over the years is the outcome of leveraging advanced technologies like Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning, which has made the difference to their customers with superior experience.

In an exclusive interaction with Adgully, Prabhakar Tiwari, CGO, Angel One Ltd, speaks about their innovation journey and how technology innovation and advancement is helping them to stay ahead of the competition.

Today, there are banks and several online broking companies who have leveraged technology to offer share trading services. How is Angel One bringing in differentiation to retain its existing customers and woo new customers?

Technological advancements have enabled financial service providers to upgrade their services and reach a point where they have transformed into digital brokers. Among the sea of digital broking services, we offer a better experience through the in-app journeys to our clients. We have been able to achieve growth and expand our client base to 9.64 million on the back of customer delight and long-lasting impressions of tech-driven financial services.

To retain existing clients and woo potential customers, Angel One is using the combination of providing best-in-class services, reasonable pricing and marketing the services to the right audience by leveraging technological advancements.

We have a deep understanding that users want seamless, customised and engaging interactions with brands as they offer sophisticated digital offerings. While state-of-the-art products and services at Angel One keep our clients hooked to us, we have deployed an integrated marketing technology stack in place that enables personalised engagement with people and builds meaningful relationships. We are leveraging social media platforms to reach our audiences.

We have several award-winning marketing campaigns to our credit, like ‘Aage Badhne ka Smart Sauda’, ‘#ShagunKeShares’, rebranding, ‘BudgetKaMatlab’, etc. These campaigns have benefitted us in reaching GenZ and millennials with our offerings. Like our campaign, ‘Aage Badhne ka Smart Sauda’ talked about iTrade Prime, which offers our clients plans such as zero charges on delivery trades and a flat fee of Rs 20 for others. Similarly, ‘#ShagunKeShares’ empowered people to gift shares as a ‘shagun’ around festival season. We also launched a campaign called ‘Ek Nayi Shuruaat’, whose aim was to familiarise more people with the basics of stock trading and investments. Smart Sauda 2.0/Very Smart Campaign encouraged new-age investors like GenZ and Millennials to be part of the Capital Market. ‘#BudgetKaMatlab’ campaign simplified the Union Budget 2022-23 for investors, who are mostly GenZ and Millennials. It focused on identifying new opportunities for investors by decoding the key aspects of the Budget.

Our initiatives are backed by data-driven marketing. We effectively use social media in reaching out to the audiences in Tier 2, 3 and beyond cities. Considering the language challenges, we also promote content in vernacular languages. In January, we teamed up with TVF’s Screen Patti for our new branded content initiative under Smart Sauda 2.0 campaign. Our core objective was to increase awareness of the stock market among new-age Indian consumers. The video addresses how Angel One can enable people in making smart investment choices. The video was simultaneously launched on social media platforms, including YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, and it featured amongst the top ten trending videos on YouTube in no time.

The investment climate looks positive, but also volatile. Did you witness any growth in your customer base? What kind of trends are you noticing in online trading with the new generation?

In the last few years, there has been a huge influx of new investors. It is the result of deeper penetration of digital services into Tier 2, 3 and beyond markets. The untapped potential in these markets is increasingly gaining access to the tools to participate in the capital market. As a result, the median age of new clients has dropped considerably to 29 years from the earlier 34 years. Our client base has also expanded to 9.64 million. With the understanding that GenZ and millennials want everything at the touch of a button, we are enabling a seamless user experience in their wealth creation journey. Given the other options in the market, it is true to the behaviour of young investors that they will not take much time to switch platforms if they are not happy with the overall experience of the app.

The new generation transacts everything on the go. How friendly is your app and what are some of the unique features that you have built in to drive some unique experience when they navigate and transact?

We offer a range of services and products through our app and website. Like our rule-based recommendation engine, ARQ Prime, adopts the time-tested and proven rules for investing in stocks. It enables investors to make an informed decision by scanning all kinds of stocks and picking winners – Value stocks, Quality stocks, High Momentum stocks, and Growth stocks across the market cap. Realising that our investors are young and need assistance in their wealth creation journey, we offer lessons for everyone, from beginners to experienced investors and traders, on our educational platform Smart Money. Insta Trade feature on our app empowers our investors to participate in Options trading. We have an open architecture, where we have integrated third-party products on our platform like smallcase, Sensibull, Streak, Vested, Market Mojo and Quicko. All this and incremental services like access to research, margin trade funding, no account opening charges, etc., is offered at a simplified pricing under our iTrade prime plan, where we charge zero brokerage on delivery trades and a nominal fee of Rs 20 for Intraday, Futures & Options, Currency, and Commodity.

While AI and ML are the latest technology everyone is talking about. How much of AI and ML you have introduced to help boost your online offerings with your customers?

Technology is at the heart of all our operations. Our stellar performance over the years is the outcome of leveraging advanced technologies like Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning. They continue to define our innovation journey. We are using better dormancy prediction models. The seamless integration of AI and ML is enabling a personalised investment experience. Like the deployment of AI through the data with temporal signals gives out personalised recommendations and journeys. We have developed a new machine learning-based forecasting model to improve top-of-the-funnel quality. We also built a new propensity model to improve client activation.

Could you elaborate more on your Super App? How will it help the end customer and how is this different from the current app? When do you plan to launch this in the market?

We are coming up with a Super App, which is codenamed Project Spark. The super app has been envisioned from the belief of simplifying investing in various asset classes for all kinds of investors. It has been architected on the principles of simplicity, reliability, availability, swiftness and transparency. This app will provide our fledging client base with a hyper-personalised and seamless experience.

While multi-functional apps are the need of the hour, new-age investors prefer to manage all their finances through one platform, they also look out for companies that understand their needs at the individual level. We are in the penultimate phase of our new Mobile App, the forerunner to the much-awaited Super App. This App is now code complete and in advanced beta and validation phase. We will soon be ready to deliver the first look, in this quarter. This app will see multiple layers being laid, in a phased manner, for different product offerings to complete the journey of the Super App.

Recently, we also concluded our Bug Bash event, where more than 1,000 company employees from marketing, sales, product, tech, etc., participated to find bugs in Spark, our upcoming Super App due for launch this quarter. Such activity is rewarding for the company, employees and users, who get improved products and services. This has been the first ever bug bash at Angel One, something that most of the big tech giants (mostly American) like Google and Microsoft do. Indian companies haven’t done this so far except for us.

What has been your communication and engagement strategy to build awareness for the Angel One brand? Is any focused media strategy planned? 

Since Angel One has been considered a traditional broking house compared to its peers, we undertook research to work towards an all-around media approach, understanding the landscape and identifying gaps. Based on the research, we created a multi-pronged content methodology that effectively addressed the complexity, language, tonality and attention span.

With a focus on consumer needs, we conducted a media dipstick with all leading publications and came to the conclusion that consumers are looking at guidance on their financial well-being and how important it is to be prepared for future uncertainties. We tap top publications for interviews, feature stories, etc., and leverage social media channels. There’s an immense focus on issuing awareness driven articles and proactive concepts across mainlines, supplements, financials, regional and digital media, creating content across basics of capital markets, challenges, myths, tips, etc., to educate first-time investors as well.