“We see a continued interest in the new-to-market customers despite volatility in FY22"

Religare Broking Ltd (RBL) is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Religare Enterprises Limited (REL), a leading diversified financial services group from India. Religare Broking is one of the leading securities firms in India serving over 1 million clients across both Online and Offline platforms. With an extensive footprint that extends all over the country; Religare Broking offers services in Equity, Currency, Commodity, Mutual Funds, Insurance, NPS and Depository services. The company has also been certified as the Great Place to Work.

Religare Broking offers a robust investment platform with industry best research and market recommendations. Their customer base is spread across India and they offer the opportunity to invest basis through and careful research. The differentiation lies not just because of their robust platform, but also their new age technology and focussed customer centric offering with a host of products and services.

In conversation with Adgully, Ashley Almeida, Executive Vice President - Digital, Product and Marketing, Religare Broking Ltd, speaks at length about how the online trading market is evolving and how they are keeping up the pace and adapting to a digitally led world and engaging with their customers continuously.

The market globally is volatile and retail investors will be anxious about investing in or partnering with a new broking firm. What has been your marketing strategy to promote Religare Broking Ltd and grow your customers?

In the context of stock markets, when markets are down and everyone is selling, it’s the opportunity to buy. So, though it may look like a contrarian advocacy; when markets are volatile, it indeed could be the best time to buy.

We are a full-service broker that offers industry-best research. Our in-house research desk shares latest market insights in real time with our customers along with actionable advice on ‘what to buy and when’. Our business idea for growth is all about customer experience. Our entire brand & marketing focus is on offering a customer-first platform that brings easy-to-use seasoned investment advice across the segments for all. This customer first approach is helping us grow consistently y-o-y.

Digital transformation has brought in agility and speed. How has Religare adapted to the changing customer behaviour post the pandemic and how has technology helped the company?

COVID-19 has been a black swan event in the history of mankind. But, every crisis has a silver lining. With prolonged work from home restrictions & financial disruptions, more & more people joined the investment bandwagon through digital trading platforms. A record surge in new investors has been registered. Interestingly, both Gen-Z as well as Millennials, who were sitting on the fence, initiated their investment journey. Markets, too, rewarded new investors in the last two years and we see a continued interest in the new-to-market customers despite volatility in FY22.

Herein, digital transformation played a crucial role. We already had dedicated retail investment apps Religare Dynami focussed on Stocks and Dynami Wrap focussed on Mutual Funds before the pandemic. We saw increased participation and interest from the customers on our digital platforms. Our app offers a guest login facility to experience the app, live market notifications, interactive price charts and real-time research ideas. We recently also launched a pre-apply IPO feature that help users apply in an IPO before the IPO is live.

All in all, our entire focus is on building a stable, scalable and user friendly investment platform.

How have you positioned Religare as a brand? What kind of differentiation do you provide compared to your competition to woo customers?

Religare Broking offers a robust investment platform with industry best research and market recommendations. Our customer base is spread across India and we offer opportunity to invest basis thorough and careful research. Our differentiation lies not only on our robust platform backed by new age tech, but also on our customer centric offerings, including the range of products, services & brokerage plans. For instance, our digitally sourced intraday traders can avail of plan options where they do not pay brokerage on loss making transactions. Likewise, digitally sourced derivative traders can avail benefits of aggressively priced option trading plan in the industry at merely Rs 5 per lot. We offer a range of personalised brokerage plans according to customer interests.

Further the customers can enjoy the best of both worlds. With the latest market research reports, notifications and updates readily available on Dynami app, they can make timely and informed decisions digitally or opt for assisted trading with the help of relationship managers.

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

Dynami app is a customer first mobile trading app. It makes trading in share market simple, easy & secure, for the beginners as well intraday traders. The app offers a Guest User facility, which helps users experience the app before opening an account with us. The interactive features in the app allow everyone to trade in the markets like seasoned investors. Some of the interesting features include interactive charts, instant Buy and Sell buttons, quick fund transfers, live notifications, price trigger alerts, personalised watchlists, a real time position and portfolio tracker and much more. The investor can directly pick from the listed stocks, ETFs, Bonds, international stocks & thematic basket portfolios. Investors can apply or pre-apply for IPOs, check research reports and make informed decisions. Thus, Dynami app lets you decide and trade on the go in real time.

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

At Religare Broking, customer experience is at the centre of its offering. We have employed Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning to offer a unique trading experience to our customer base. Using artificial intelligence & augmented voice intelligence systems, we offer instant and personalised investment opportunities, advisory services and research ideas via a bot through phone calls.The customers can interact with the bot just like they would do with any other human being. They can enquire about the rationale of the investment idea, what is its investment horizon and the returns expected, who is the research analyst and then decide to invest. We are also combining AI & ML with analytics to offer personalised choices to the customers, on the basis of their stock preferences, search behaviour activity in the mobile app. We are able to identify what are other stocks and investments that customers will prefer basis their demographics, current app behaviour, investment patterns and their current holdings and then use that information to suggest other relevant opportunities.

What has been your communication and engagement strategy to build awareness about Religare Broking Ltd? How do you plan to reach your audience? What kind of media strategy is planned?

The recent growth in the stock market has come largely from the retail audiences in Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities. We have also found an influx of younger audience in the 25-35 years bracket taking to the stock markets. We have realised that investing can be intimidating and in order to engage and attract new investors marketing communications need to be simple, relevant and in a language the user can understand easily.

The central theme of our communications is around offering an investment platform along with great investment ideas, insights and opportunities.

Our strategy for leveraging this audience is 100% digital. We have increased our focus on serving our users with varied forms of content like videos, Reels, etc. Our media mix uses a heavy focus on Search, Paid media, app install campaigns and social. We have variations of creatives in English and Vernacular languages to cater to different markets. We have seen that many users like to experience the app first and hence, we focus on driving app installs as a mechanism to drive the right traffic to our app, let them experience it and then register with us.

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