Investsmart India

Off-line backup
Investsmart India is an initiative of Infrastructure Leasing and Financial Services Limited (IL&FS). It offers a range of financial services from planning to execution — all under one roof. Investsmart.com provides personal finance advisory and execution services and manages investments for individual investors. Invest-smart has a full-fledged network of 10 branch offices across Mumbai, Chennai, Pune, Bangalore, Delhi and Calcutta. It is fast expanding and will soon be in other major cities all over India. The on-line trading platform carries a step-by-step demo to acquaint investors with e-trading.

Further, the trading platform also gives direct access to the investor’s bank account (HDFC Bank) and DP account. Says S Rengarajan, COO,“We commenced e-trading in Feb.2000. Initially, we plan to convert all our off- line investors to on-line. But till our infrastructure is in place, we will continue to give a thrust to the off-line business. We have around 2,600 registered members with over 350 active clients from all the major metros.”

Highlighting some of the basic problems faced by investsmart clients, he says, “Bandwidth and non-seamlessness of all intermediaries are the main problems to be tackled. Investors are not used to take decisions on their own but still want to listen to a voice on the telephone. Connectivity, lack of speed, etc. are the main bottlenecks in the infrastruc- ture side.”