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After graduating from IIM Bangalore, Sandeep Jethwani began his career by managing investment portfolios of the wealthiest Indians across geographies.He recognized the disparity in access to top-tier investment management services, where the wealthiest had effortless opportunities while other investors, particularly the affluent Indians, faced difficulties in making well-informed decisions.

Identifying this gap, he established Dezerv, an investment management company that provided affluent Indians with exclusive access to a team of experts. Through active portfolio management, investors receive timely corrective action and personalised portfolio strategies.

“India has close to about 250 investment advisors per million households whereas the number goes up to 4,000 in the US. So, it is quite clear that there is a need for better money management in India. However, there is not enough hand holding for affluent Indians looking to diversify their portfolio,” Jethwani said.

Dezerv is essentially a house of investment solutions. Aiming at wealth creation, the startup offers a wide range of services starting from portfolio review to building a personalised portfolio.

Retention-led growth

Founded in 2021, the startup has so far analysed over INR 10,000 crore and managed over Rs 2,700 crore of investment.

“We have had over one lakh users sign up on our platform. Moreover, our retention metrics are also looking good. I believe, in business, repetition and retention are precursors of success,” Jethwani said.

The founder has been in the investment management business for over two decades now and believes that fundamentals of the business do not change. Trust is the most important factor, especially where money is involved.

“More than 70 % of our users who spent three months on the Dezerv platform have repeated their investments with us. So, the metrics are encouraging for us from a retention perspective,” he shared.

Building with WebEngage

Dezerv was very early in its journey when the company joined the WebEngage Startup Program.

“As an early-stage startup it was important for us to explore and WebEngage Startup Program gave us a free trial of six months to be able to experiment. Moreover, there was always a spokesperson from their end to help us with all sorts of questions,” Jethwani said.

He credited the WebEngage Startup Program for helping the startup to understand personalised user journeys and enabling it to integrate all social media on a single platform.

“If we were to do this by ourselves, it would take a lot of manual effort. The tools and assistance by WebEngage Startup Program helped us accelerate faster,” he added.

Visibility on daily engagement metrics, user traffic activities, live dashboard, and key data insights are some of the reasons why Dezerv decided to leverage WebEngage Startup Program services.

Jethwani wants the platform to reach more and more affluent Indians for them to be able to leverage quality investment management services. “We are now putting more capital than ever for scaling,” Jethwani said.

The cost of acquiring new customers for businesses is significantly high and hence more and more companies are now investing in retention marketing tools. 

This story is the second in a series called Retentioneering, where new-age startups share with us their experience of working with the WebEngage Startup Program and how the platform helped them with various retention efforts.