ET Wealth’s first book on personal finance, You Can Be Rich launched

As India starts to savour economic resurgence after one of the worst and most prolonged financial downturns, the retail investor is all set to join in. Yet, very few of these aspiring retail investors will succeed in converting the opportunity into substantial personal wealth.

In fact, at any given point, people let go of scores of avenues of wealth enhancement due to flawed choices and half-baked knowledge about the investing instruments. As an ongoing endeavour to dispel this widespread ignorance, ET Wealth launched its maiden book, You Can Be Rich, on 10 September 2014, in Bangalore.

The occasion was marked by a lively panel discussion attended by renowned financial experts and advisers.

“Financial literacy in India is extremely low, which is why planning is very important for people,” said R K Dubey, chairman and managing director of Canara Bank, after releasing the book jointly with four other luminaries.

These included T V Mohandas Pai, chairman, Manipal Global Education, and former member, board of directors, Infosys; Priya Sunder, director, PeakAlpha Investments; Nitin Vyakaranam, co-founder and CEO, ArthaYantra and T Srikanth Bhagavat, managing director, Hexagon Capital Advisors.

As Dubey rued financial illiteracy even among the educated, he stressed on regular saving for compounding money and building a big corpus. He also welcomed the book, saying it was a much-needed endeavour to help spread financial awareness. While agreeing that saving was important, Pai said that the current eco-system was conducive to growing wealth and there were plenty of opportunities for starting one’s own enterprise.

“Today, people have many successful role models, fewer liabilities in terms of small nuclear families, spouse support and fewer risks. So it’s easy to become an entrepreneur, but one still needs to plan well before doing so,” he said.

“At the end of the day, you should live your dream and be happy,” he added. To give shape to these dreams, planning is critical and a lot of Indians are beginning to do so, said Vyakaranam, whose financial advisory firm is being approached by people from tier 2 and 3 cities to help achieve their goals. Across India, the primary goals for most investors remain educating their children and planning for retirement,” he revealed.

It is for such people that You Can Be Rich serves as an ideal honing ground since it can apprise them of the basics of financial planning by cutting through jargon and listing out the essentials of investment and appropriate instruments.

Bhagavat too stressed on financial planning and striking a balance between living frugally and dying rich. “Opt for the ‘minimum viable lifestyle’ if you want to ensure growth of wealth and success in your venture,” he said, in response to a query by Sunder, who moderated the session.

Wrapping up the discussion, Sunder said, “The young generation is messing up its finances. Financial planning can help them take control and this book is a step in the right direction.” The event was well-attended by ET Wealth readers (see left), who also participated in a short interactive session towards the end by throwing up questions to the panelists. In his closing speech, Dubey stressed on the need for both conservative and risky investing avenues to ensure a sound financial portfolio. The event ended with the distribution of complimentary copies of the book to the audience.