March to Your Goal, Unhindered

Keeping your financial aspirations flexible and adaptable to shifting circumstances is key to building a fortune

- Salil Gupta

Hari Kant Prasher, a Senior Manager in the telecommunication industry, came to Mumbai along with his wife, Bandana Prasher, from a satellite town in Northern India north with dreams of making it big in the city and the world. While Hari Kant had little exposure to mutual funds during the earlier years of his career, an unplanned set of investments culminated into an unpleasant experience. His financial plans revolved around traditional savings products, including guaranteed income products, bank deposits. With bigger aspirations and dreams, he approached S-Cube Associates in 2006. There were multiple financial goals to target in devising a prudent financial plan. It had to start with creating an emergency fund to cope with any financial insecurities, having a life and medical insurance, buying a car and house apart from saving enough to take care of his parents and children’s education and marriage.

Due to his not-so-good experience with mutual fund investing in the past, it was essential to build that confidence in Hari Kant to reinvest in mutual funds. This started with some debt fund investments to take care of the emergency corpus. Salil Gupta, S-Cube Associates, recalls the initial years with Hari Kant, “We could see that the progress towards financial goals was slow. It felt like nothing was changing for good. The portfolio returns suffered as initial savings were all going in low-yielding debt funds for emergency corpus. However, we focused on managing risk. Market corrections in 2011-12 helped our strategy of prudent risk management, as Hari Kant’s portfolio could survive brutal corrections.”