ETMarkets Fund Manager Talk: IPO pipeline for 2023 strong despite prevailing market risks: Anand Dalmia, Fisdom

The IPO market did extremely well in India in the last 2 years. What’s your key takeaways and how do you expect it to be in 2023? Do you think issuances will top the 2022 figure?
While risks around key variables in 2022 are being carried forward to 2023, most of it seems to have effectively percolated in prices and sentiments.

The IPO pipeline for 2023 looks strong with several consumer-tech and new-age companies attempting to get their listing plans on track as further clarity emerges from the regulatory perspective.

While 2021 was an exuberant year for IPOs and 2022 relatively tepid, we expect the coming year to be right at the middle in terms of number and size of IPOs that will be launched.

What’s your outlook for the equity and debt market in 2023 and which sectors/pockets look attractive for investment?
Indian equities are strongly positioned for a multi-year structural rally. The valuation, at least for select broad indices, appear slightly elevated at the moment. However, the premium is majorly attributable to the distinct advantage that India and Indian equities offer, especially against the global economic backdrop.

However, the tide did not lift all boats. There remains some solid pockets of opportunities that can be expected to generate significant investor wealth in the times to come. Select sectors offering such an opportunity would include infrastructure, capital goods, utilities and FMCG.

While equity markets are north-bound, near-term prospects are appearing choppy. However, at the same time, high-quality sovereign or AAA-rated fixed income instruments with an effective maturity of 3-5 years seem to offer a strong investment proposition.

In the medium term, PSU and SDL papers also offer promising investment prospects.

What are the key changes you have seen in the retail investor’s investment behaviour, given that 76% of your customer base are from tier-2, 3 cities?
One very notable change is the shift in their perception of capital markets. For a large set of people, especially based out of tier-2 and beyond cities, capital markets would be a taboo.

But today, with increased awareness, not only are people acknowledging the important role of capital markets in personal wealth creation but are also voluntarily investing in the capital market-linked products like mutual funds as a preferred investment instrument.

One sector that everyone is bullish on today is the banking sector, which is boosting its tech capabilities in a big way and expanding offerings. How will Fisdom drive financial Inclusion?
Fisdom is a strategic partner to some of the largest and the fastest growing banks in India. One thing that runs common across these successful banks and us, is customer centricity. We build intuitive platforms backed by robust engines to make an investor’s investing journey less intimidating and more rewarding.

Most people begin their investing journey late or never at all simply because of their behavioural inertia. The inertia typically resists a steep learning curve, operational workload and the anxiety that tags along with investment decisions.

At Fisdom, we solve all of this through an intuitive experience, highly-efficient digital journey and a guidance ecosystem that helps in informed decision-making.

Technology in the financial services sector is emerging in a big way, and it has its own pros and cons. What are the unique offerings that differentiate you from your competitors in this segment?
We are the only wealth tech brand with demonstrable success as a strategic partner to large banks across categories. Apart from the distinct business model that blends the best of leading banks and a world-class fintech, our platform is quite unique too. The platform is simple and intuitive from a user perspective but runs on a technologically sophisticated, research-backed engine. The engine enables users to opt into our guided-choice model where the platform assists the user in making more informed decisions. We also offer investors a 360-degree experience of tracking and transacting multiple investment products through a single platform.

What are your expansion plans? And would that entail any further fundraising?
In terms of expansion, we intend to acquire more strategic partnerships with leading banks while deepening the relationship with all our partners and serving more of their customers at the same time.

We continue to stay ahead of the curve by investing in and developing our platform and the technology stack that powers it.

Over a period, if aligned with the overall business’ success, we may seek to extend into the manufacturing of financial products. We are looking to expand our revenues by 4x this year.

As far as the subject of fundraising goes, we have a strong balance sheet and are well-capitalised to fund our planned growth.

We have been fortunate to be backed by marquee institutional investors who believe in us and our mission strongly.

Having said that, we may seek to raise additional funds depending on our growth aspirations and prevailing market conditions.

You currently manage an AUM of over Rs 5,000 crore. By how much do you see it growing over the next 3-5 years?
Fisdom, through its bank partnerships, has access to 40 crore customers holding total deposits worth Rs 30 lakh crore. We intend to penetrate and acquire 1% of the customer base and garner assets worth 3-4% of the total deposit base.

Your aim is to have 4 million customers over the next 2 years. How do you plan to achieve this?
We are integrated in the mobile banking suite of our bank partners which offers the customers access to our platform. Mobile banking is clearly taking off as the primary and preferred banking interface. Through our strategic bank partnerships, we have access to 40 crore bank customers. Some of our partnerships with larger organisations like

, India Post Payments Bank and CSC have been inked only recently.

However, we are confident to be able to serve 1% of the total base here through our platform integrated with the bank’s digital assets.

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