Neostar

Today, I will write about the birth of Neostar.
In September 2002, my FDs with HDFC bank was due for renewal. My Personal Banking Manager, Balaram, called me and told me that my FDs which was earning 10.5% interest will now earn only 6% and as a priority Customer, they will give me a rate of 6.25%. I literally fell off from my rocker. Since I came out of India in 1991, I have never thought of any alternative investment opportunities other than bank deposits and was content to have a good interest rate without too much head ache.
Since Balram was a very nice guy and friendly, I asked him if he could suggest me any alternative method of investment. He was very kind to come to my home and explain to me about Mutual Funds. Sensex was @2,650 on that day. I was a little skeptic, but decided to take a calculated risk by starting with a small amount first. I invested 40,000 in spread in 4 mutual fund schemes. Once I invested in Mutual Fund, I started reading about it and that lead me to equities. I understood that MFs invest our money in equities and share the profits generated with us after taking a small commission. I thought, why not directly invest in equities? I went to the friendly neighborhood Geojit (There were not so many brokers available in those days) and opened an account. I invested 60,000 in i 5 shares suggested by the BM.
Then, the sensex started sliding down wards to 2,350! My investment was in big loss. I resisted the temptation to withdraw and kept on bravely and in fact added some money in HDFC Growth fund. I sold of the first investments when these returned to some profit not wanting to take too much chances. I would rather not see the prices of those stocks today :(
I realized that investing in equities without proper advice is worse than gambling. Then I noticed that Capital market was one source used by most financial channels and portals. I wrote to them and took a subscription to telefolio paying Rs10,000 and started investing as per their advise.
My fortunes improved dramatically. Then I wanted to take their full service which was priced at 1 lac. I asked 4 of my friends to join me showing the returns I got and we subscribed to the full service together. Then other friends joined and the circle got bigger. And so did our knowledge. In 2005 January, I went to Geojit and told them that we as a group find it difficult to trade with ease and asked them to give us exclusive access. They suggested that we take a franchisee.
That is how Neostar was born. We expanded the consultation from capital market to 3 more other Equity advisory Services to get have more safety by spreading the risk. Our friends also increased to 50. Initially we used to take contributions from all to pay the consultants. Then, our franchisee started to pay for itself and we stopped such contributions. Now, the equity advise is provided free. We also went one step ahead and reduced the brokerage from 0.675% to 0.5% and also started keeping P/L account for our friends and sending it weekly to them.
I am glad to say that we have created a few millionaires during the past 3 years of operation.
Now we are expanding the circle further with the aim of taking such products to more people so that they also can join the up trend and profit from it even if they are completely ignorant about the equity markets etc... We have profited. We would like more people benefit from such buoyant economy.
We do not want to aggressively market any products for our own profit. Our profits come from our own investments. But we would like to see that more people get to know the choices available and even the poorer section of the people can profit by small amount of investments in Mutual Funds. We will never try to sell a product for our benefit only, but will suggest products that will benefit the investor. That is our motto.
The current bull run started from December 2003 has made millions of people rich. But mainly in Metros and in Gujarat. What I would like to see is that more common people benefit from it like we have benefited. That is our mission.