They found it hard to find a way to invest and hence started up, the story of TriVest Folio
Sandip Southekal and Siddharth Choksi were students and pals at the University of Maryland, College Park about five years ago. Both of them graduated and got themselves a job. And, as is the case with many Indians in the US, they were looking to send some of the money back home and start building an investment portfolio for the future. New to the space of finance, they found it hard to grasp the intricacies and thus started looking for a way out.
Joining forces, they decided to come up with a single source where people could easily and clearly understand the different investing options available to them. "We did not want to take the help of expensive financial advisors and there was no source to go to make well-informed independent financial decisions," says Sandip. The resulting product was TriVest Folio.
They recognized Mutual Fund investments as an ideal long-term investment option and decided to go ahead by giving the average investor an option to build an investment portfolio and keep track of it.
TriVest Folio is a personal investment tool, which in the founders words, helps the average investor in the following ways:
1) Providing a framework to start building a fully diversified portfolio of top performing Mutual Funds and ETFs based on their age-risk profile.
2) Keeping them on track and fully informed through weekly summary reports.
3) Providing rebalancing alerts when the allocation across different assets gets unbalanced.
The service was launched in July 2013 and has attracted more than 100 registered till date. TriVest Folio works on a freemium model where the company allows investors to build a maximum of 5 portfolios which will always be free. On top of the basic plan for a monthly fee, investors will be allowed to create unlimited portfolios and gain access to accredited financial advisors to answer any questions they might have.
There are other players in the market like Scripbox and the much bigger MoneyControl but the sector as a whole has been mired with some difficulties as it is especially hard to gain trust. "Our vision is to become the Do-It-Yourself (DIY) investing tool for an average investor. We want to provide top-class, meaningful analytics surrounding personal investments and make available sophisticated investing tools to everyone. TriVest Folio exists solely to provide unbiased and cost-effective financial help and play in role in achieving financial independence," says Sandip. The duo are still validating the product, and good adoption would be a sign of more acceptance for financial products.
Website: TriVest Folio