The Making of DENIP Consultants Pvt. Ltd.

This idea of starting an Investment Consulting Firm was lingering in the head of Mr. Nimesh Marfatia for a quite a while during his tenure with Angel Broking Ltd (Angel). The day the idea germinated in my mind, I thought of contacting Dewang Mehta, my friend cum brother, a MBA Graduate in Finance from K. J. Somaiya then working as a Consultant for Global eProcure(GeP). So, one day in March 2009, I called Dewang and invited him to dinner at The Sheesha’s Bandra.

15^th March, we agreed to meet & it turned out to be a day that changed our lives. At the restaurant, Dewang and I filled each other with the details of our life goals and it turned out that we both had similar ideas and goal of where to be in life.

On the business front, we agreed that there was space to create an Investment Consulting Company which would focus on growing the client’s investments and build long term personalized relationship with them. At first we were just talking ball park estimates but by the time dinner was over, we decided that we should meet more often and sculpt the future of this idea. We had several challenges to conceiving this venture:

• · Firstly, we were doing very well in our respective jobs and had possible salary and position bumps to think of.
• · Secondly, entering the business domain when people only understand jobs and feel that there is no place for business these days and that the businesses are not doing well.
• · Thirdly, entering a business which people only understand as speculation and gambling.
• · Creating a niche for ourselves when the market is filled with a million other players within the vicinity of 10kms.

All this required critical planning and documentation. However our commitment to this venture was much more than we had even imagined. We started meeting 4-5 times a week, finding time out of our busy schedules. We started discussing our plans for this venture while walking, eating and even before ending the day. Airtel was enjoying huge revenues out of us at that given point of time.

We had a couple of advantages during that time; our offices were just 2 minutes apart and both I and Nimesh could meet each other even for a sandwich and discuss the business venture in greater detail.

As days passed we got serious about this business idea and decided that we should put a pen to our thoughts and create a concrete business plan. Our educational qualification helped at such times. All those times during our engineering and management where we thought that documenting a business idea was a waste of time were being proved wrong. We were documenting our business covering hundreds of pages and excel sheets. We remembered the SDLC (system development life cycle for all you non-engineers out there), laughed about it (about how we used to RATTO the whole process and write it during our exams) and then put it to practice for our business.

Dewang did the excel sheets while Nimesh did the documentation. We started planning capital requirements, possible expenses, possible income, business associates, employee strength, office space etc. As a next step we started allocating dates for these ideas to convert them into executable business. We had targets at the end of every week, targets to meet business venture, ink long term deals, meet our advisors and well wishers, get the necessary certifications etc.

On the business front, we agreed that the best way to approach our business was to overestimate the expenses while underestimating the income that we could generate. We believe that in any enterprise, it is always a happy thing if your income exceeded your expectations but if your costs ever exceed your expectations, you are definitely in trouble.

After several hundred excel sheets and million discussions and debates on the same, we decided that we could fund our own business and that no capital was required from either our parents or friends or even the bank. However we agreed on one thing is that we will approach the Venture Capitalists once we decide to expand our business in the years to come.

At that point of time we had two people who were acting as major support to us, first Mr. Kishor Mehta who agreed to provide two of his office spaces to us for doing our business and second Mr. Jayesh Marfatia who provided vital information and support on how to run a private limited firm and the best way to conduct ethical business.

After the planning stage we decided to complete the requirements gathering stage. This felt like a stage which would take time but was over even before it started. All the educational requirements & qualifications were in place. We were certified for the capital markets (BSE/NSE Cash), derivatives market (BSE / NSE FO), commodity market (MCX/NCDEX), certified life insurance advisors (LIC / ICICI prudential), certified non-life insurance advisors (Bajaj Allianz / ICICI Lombard) & certified mutual fund advisors (AMFI certified and registered with all MF houses) within no time. However one more certification still remains for us i.e. Certified Financial Planners. We have the knowledge to do it but we respect both business and knowledge and will indulge into this business once we get the certification for it.

Once we had the certifications in place we were convinced about the workability; we started the process of registering the Organization in June. This process too was some experience for us, registering ourselves as directors, getting the digital signature, filling forms, processing documents etc. We were playing it defensive and ensuring that everything fell into place. We were helped by two people during this time i.e. Mr. Niranjan who is a qualified Chartered Accountant and Mr. Prasen Naithani who is a qualified company secretary. Finally after all those hassles we conceived our company on the 29^th of July and we named it DENIP Consultants Private Limited; officially registered with the ROC (Registrar Of Companies).