Nehal Mota, Co-founder of Finnovate, is a dynamic successful financial services professional with close to 20 years of industry experience under her belt. She is known among her peers for her passion, non-conformist attitude & resilience.
Nehal had a highly successful corporate stint, with a reputation of achieving the impossible. She joined ICICI Pru life in its founding batch of Financial Service Consultants and her hunger, her grit and her talent for numbers saw her swiftly rise up the corporate ladder at breakneck speed. Within 3.5 years, she became VP-Sales at IIFL, building on their corporate vertical from scratch and managing a team of 500 people.
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Growing up in hardship shaped her deep belief that everybody should acquire the knowledge and capability to make their money work for them, so that they are able to control the quality of their life choices.
It is this passion that got her to start Finnovate in 2007 with her partner Naveen. With Nehal’s capability in sales, marketing and organisation building, and Naveen’s background as a technologist and their combined knowledge of Financial markets, it was a good fit.
Starting just before the financial crisis of 2008 got Finnovate off to a rocky beginning, but the experience of surviving it helped shape Finnovate into becoming a company that focussed on a family’s whole financial fitness . It convinced Nehal and Naveen that focussing on just wealth management was a myopic approach to building long term financial wellbeing for the whole family.
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Finnovate reinvented itself as India’s first family financial fitness company in 2013-14. The Mission is still the same. They want every Indian to be Financially Fit, so they can live a life free of money worries and be empowered to make choices that take them to their dream life.
Since 2013-14, Finnovate has educated over 35000 people about Financial Fitness by conducting over 500 seminars / Webinars. It has also empowered over 2000 clients achieve over 10,000+ of their dreams.
The difference between Finnovate and other ‘WealthTech’ players is in how they think about money. They believe holistic Financial Fitness rests on 6 pillars. It starts with Goal Planning - planning for key life events - such as retirement, or a child’s education. It is followed by Budgeting and Tax Planning, Risk Planning via Insurance, Loan Management, Investment Planning and finally Estate Planning - or managing one’s inheritance.
The company combines the expertise of experienced FinnFit Consultants with AI-driven algorithms to help clients grow their money safely, surely, and swiftly. The result is a hybrid personal finance platform that sets itself apart from traditional wealth advisors.
Starting with Goal Planning also brings about some fundamental differences between Finnovate and traditional wealth advisors.
“The portfolio they build for their clients emerges after they carefully understand clients’ goals and dreams, and keeps in mind their ability to withstand risk - in terms of their life stage, their total income and their personal appetite for risk. “This means Finnovate’s preference is for a prudent growth strategy that delivers stable double digit returns over a long period of time.
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Finnovate is also very big on building and keeping customer trust. “Financial fitness is a life long journey and our customers stay with us for a very long period of time. So trust is not negotiable for us. Therefore, we never push any products on our clients. We transparently share not only the research that drives our portfolio recommendation but also proactively divulge how we earn, so that they are confident we have their best interests at heart” Nehal says.
Financial Fitness is a game of patience and consistency, not one that follows fads and rumours. “We believe that No. of times you enter the market and time spent in the market is more important than timing the market”, Nehal quips.
