Avinash Luthria

Hourly-Fee Financial Planner & SEBI Registered Investment Adviser

Avinash Luthria - Website - 2024 - 50p

Former Private Equity investor and MBA in Finance from IIM Bangalore

  • Former Private Equity investor 
    • Total of 24 years of experience including...
    • 12 years of experience as a Private Equity / Venture Capital investor
    • 6+ years of experience as an Hourly-Fee Financial Planner & SEBI RIA
  • MBA in Finance from IIM Bangalore
    • Two-year full-time MBA (Finance) from Indian Institute of Management Bangalore (IIMB) i.e. top-3 MBA in India
    • Including myself, there are a total of only two Hourly-Fee / Fixed-Fee RIAs in India with a two-year full-time MBA (Finance) from a top-4 IIM
      • The other such person became an RIA in 2024 i.e. approximately 6 years after I became an RIA. FYI: His (not my) registered address is in Chennai
      • Note: One-year MBA courses and Part-time MBA courses from the IIMs have a massively lower bar to accept students

Radically changed financial planning in India

  • 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 to recommend only Passive Index Funds and avoid all Active Investing
    • 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
    • The first RIA in India to publicly recommend investing only in Passive Index Funds
  • First Hourly-Fee / Fixed-Fee RIA in India to explain and use a conservative Zero-Real-Return approach to financial planning
  • Joint-First Hourly-Fee / Fixed-Fee RIA in India to use the Customized (6+ 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
    • Note: This earlier used to be an engagement with even more hours of engagement. However, as explained on the Fees page, SEBI regulations indirectly limit the number of hours of effort in the engagement. Hence to make the engagement fit within the number of hours of effort that is allowed by regulations, I have recorded some generic aspects of the engagement as audio presentations. Clients watch those audio presentations before the call so that the client and I can focus on client specific aspects during the calls
  • 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
  • Focus on clients who are knowledgeable about personal finance and investing
  • One of the first-ten Hourly-Fee / Fixed-Fee RIAs in India

Experience

  • Total of 24 years of experience including...
  • 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)
  • 6 years of experience as a SEBI Registered Investment Adviser (RIA; registration number INA200011125)
    • Cumulatively engaged with 100+ High Net worth client families...
    • ...Client families meet the age-wise net worth criteria suggested on the Fees page of this website
  • 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

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