Avinash Luthria
Hourly-Fee Financial Planner & SEBI Registered Investment Adviser

The only Hourly-Fee / Fixed-Fee RIA in India with prior investment experience and a top MBA
- The first Hourly-Fee Financial Planner in India and the third Hourly-Fee Financial Planner in the World
- 'Hourly-Fee' is defined here
- Hourly-Fees are the gold-standard in transparency
- Followed this approach from my very first client
- There are only 8 Hourly-Fee Financial Planners in India
- The only Hourly-Fee / Fixed-Fee RIA in India with prior investment work-experience
- The only Hourly-Fee / Fixed-Fee RIA in India with a two-year, full-time (i.e. flagship course) MBA from a top-3 (or even top-4) IIM
- The only Hourly-Fee / Fixed-Fee RIA in India to recommend only Passive Index Funds
- Passive Index Funds includes broad-market Index Funds such as the Nifty 50 Index Fund and the US S&P500 Index Fund etc. Passive Index Funds excludes Smart-Beta / Factor Funds and other such 'Active' investment approaches that pretend to be a 'Passive' investment approach
- Followed this approach from my very first client
- First Hourly-Fee / Fixed-Fee RIA in India to explain and use a conservative Zero-Real-Returns approach to financial planning
- Followed this approach from my very first client
- Most likely, the first RIA in the world to explain and use this approach
- Joint-First Hourly-Fee / Fixed-Fee RIA in India to use the Customized (approximately 9 hours of effort with new clients) process which is the opposite of the (2-hours of effort with new clients) Robo++ Process
- Followed this approach from my very first client
- First Hourly-Fee / Fixed-Fee RIA in India to explain and use the risk-averse insight that equity is risky even in the long term
- Followed this approach from my very first client
- Among the first-ten Hourly-Fee / Fixed-Fee RIAs in India
Experience
- 12 years of experience as a Private Equity / Venture Capital investor
- Including a decade as a Partner and one of the five members of the founding team at a top-10 independent Indian Private Equity & Venture Capital fund (that fund has Assets Under Management of USD 400+ million ; Rs 2,800+ crore)
- 5+ years of experience as a SEBI Registered Investment Adviser (RIA; registration number INA200011125)
- This registration mandates that RIAs follow a Fee-Only Investment Advisory revenue model and where the RIA is a fiduciary i.e.
- RIAs should put the client’s interest ahead of his own interests
- RIAs owes the client reasonable duty of care
- The spirit of this regulation is that RIAs should provide the service as a profession and not as a business
- SEBI regulations do not require an hourly fee. However being a true fiduciary requires it
- This can be seen from the fact that other fiduciaries such as doctors and lawyers charge their clients an hourly fee
Education
- Two-year, full-time (i.e. the flagship course) MBA from Indian Institute of Management Bangalore (IIMB), focusing on Finance & Strategy (2000-2002)
- Certified Financial Planner (CFP)
- Bachelor of Engineering (Computer Science & Engineering) from RV College of Engineering, Bangalore
Further details
- Based in Bangalore but clients could be in any city in India (e.g. Mumbai, Chennai) or an NRI who is resident in the US / UK / Singapore / the Middle East but who is likely to eventually retire in India
- My LinkedIn profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/avinashluthria/
- Video: YouTube video about Misconceptions about Early Retirement