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Vasanth Kamath

smallcase

Vasanth Kamath is a seasoned entrepreneur known for his role as the Founder & CEO at smallcaseHQ and TickertapeIN. With a background in Economics, he pursued an Integrated MS degree at the prestigious Indian Institute of Technology in Kharagpur. Prior to his current ventures, Vasanth was the Founder of smallcase. His professional journey showcases a blend of academic excellence and practical business experience.

Highlights

Sep 4 · linkedin

⚡ Zerodha Fund House filed 2 products today for regulatory approval.. the first of many more to come. It's been an eventful last few weeks as ZFH received the AMC license and along with that, a ton of love and wishes from the investor community

When we started smallcase in 2015, retail investors were mostly either investing in stocks or MFs with a tiny overlap of those doing both. One of our key beliefs was (& still is) that investors will have both instruments in their portfolios compared to an either/or approach. The majority should start their investing journey with MFs and w a growth in portfolio size & maturity, look for greater decision-making & control. smallcases form a middle ground as there's research combined with ownership & customisability in a simple & transparent wrapper

Around the same time, index funds & ETFs started to see traction for similar characteristics of simplicity & transparency. Growing awareness, widening markets and regulatory initiatives enabled greater participation from both individual and institutional investors. We believed that by extending the smallcase format beyond stocks to include ETFs, more people could build better, diversified portfolios in their demat accounts. We added ETFs to the smallcases Platform in mid-2018.

The adoption of ETFs in smallcases has rapidly grown in the last 3 years, with managers using these as core building blocks or for specific exposures in their strategies & ideas. The most popular smallcases even today are ETF asset allocation strategies. In parallel, we also developed platforms & APIs that help asset managers, advisors & wealth apps offer ETFs to their clients seamlessly. Today, smallcases are leading India's retail transition to passives contributing more than 1 in every 3 new ETF folios created in FY23 🇮🇳

This overwhelming response pushed us to think more about how we could bring the power of passives to every retail investor. An AMC made the most sense as we felt we could innovate on multiple fronts - product, process & service. This was also a natural progression to our mission of building the next-gen investment product layer using technology. We found a great partner in Zerodha to set up a fund house that could take a principled & focused approach to re-imagining mutual funds

Vishal Jain was our first call when we were recruiting the team, as he has been a passives specialist for 25 years - having been part of the founding teams at India's first index services company & India's first passive AMC. He had all the user insights, product knowledge & passion to help us put our best foot forward. With a young, energetic & smart team backing him, we are very excited to begin this new journey and look for your honest feedback, suggestions and ideas as we build this out.. 🙏

Feb 15 · linkedin

As the founder of a retail investing platform, I keep getting asked "Where do you invest your money?"

I started my investing journey at the age of 22 with mutual funds & stocks through my first demat account

Over time, I have realized the value of taking a top-down asset allocation approach. Even within a specific asset class (for eg. Equity), getting to the right mix of both diversified & focused exposures took a lot of time & several mistakes

Asking myself each time whether a bet or opportunity is long-term enough and fits into my overall portfolio framework helped me take better decisions and not give in to FOMO

So, if you've ever asked me or wondered what my equity portfolio looks like today, here's your answer.. (link in comments)

smallcase Omkara Capital LotusDew Wealth and Investment Advisors Windmill Capital Niveshaay Investment Advisory

Vasanth Kamath
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Location

Bengaluru, Karnataka, India