Welcome To Project Swarajya
Swarajya - Envisioned by Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj. Proclaimed by Lokmanya Bal Gangadhar Tilak. Both bound in spirit by a common goal. To decentralise and transfer control into the hands of an inclusive, righteous and empowered society.
So what does all of this have to do with our money? All of us have a natural right to be in complete control of our money. Consummate control can only be achieved through knowledge, not the one time transfer of a document (your financial plan). When working with you, I see myself first as an educator and then an architect for your financial framework. I therefore believe in teaching you the essential principles that govern your relationship with your money. This would ultimately put you firmly in charge of your money without the need for professional help over a span of 2-3 years. All you need is an open mind that is willing to learn and the discipline to execute. If you can bring both of these to the table, we can definitely work towards helping you achieve Financial Swarajya.
My Approach To Financial Planning And Portfolio Construction
To my common sense, financial planning is driven by simplicity. I view a financial plan as a blueprint that helps my clients create a financial toolkit for themselves. Each component of the toolkit must serve a clear purpose. Each of them must contribute to the financial well being of the client. I therefore focus on creating plans with products that are simple and purposeful.
When constructing portfolios for clients, I follow the Passive or Defensive Approach. It was originally propogated by Benjamin Graham. It is essentially a long term, buy and hold approach to investing and portfolio construction. It focuses on avoiding mistakes and making as few investment decisions as possible. It aims to minimise effort for the investor and diversify the portfolio at low costs. At this point some context as to why I advocate the passive approach may be useful. Portfolio management through product selection demands two things from the investor in significant proportions. These are knowledge and time. Virtually all of us are employed in extremely challenging and demanding jobs. This means we may not be able to offer the kind of knowledge and time required for effective portfolio management based on product selection. When we may not be able to meet the demands of a particular strategy, it is best not to follow it.
The passive approach mitigates the need for product selection and frequent portfolio management. This keeps things simple and allows us to pretty much put our portfolios on autopilot. This allows us to focus on pursuing more important things in life such as our profession and passions. With minimal fine tuning whenever required, our portfolios would take care of themselves.
I therefore mainly construct client portfolios using mutual funds, sometimes using ETFs (Exchange Traded Funds). I recommend ONLY index funds or ETFs for the equity allocation in portfolios. For the debt component, I recommend a combination of EPF/PPF/NPS (NPS only in select cases) and liquid mutual funds. I do not offer advice on derivatives (Futures and Options), direct equity (individual stocks), PMS (Portfolio Management Services) AIF (Alternative Investment Funds). I also do not offer advice on cryptocurrencies and other unregulated investment products.
I also focus on educating my clients on personal finance and money management. Over the course of an engagement with a client, I impart fundamental principles of personal finance and financial planning to them. I do this to make them capable of handling their own finances, over a span of 2-3 years. At that point, engaging me should become an option rather than a necessity for the client.
Foundational Principles Of Project Swarajya
Project Swarajya is meant to be a professional and collaborative partnership built on mutual respect, clear communication, and shared commitment. To deliver the best possible experience during the engagement, I hold both of us to very high professional standards:
Punctuality & Consistency: Timely attendance for financial planning sessions, plan presentation sessions and annual review sessions (from the second year onwards) would ensure that we complete the engagement at the earliest without unnecessary delays.
Prompt Communication: Prompt responses to messages and emails during the onboarding process, initial engagement and when confirming your availability for financial planning sessions, plan presentation sessions, and annual review sessions (from the second year onwards). This ensures that your engagement moves forward smoothly.
Mutual Accountability: I hold myself to these exact same standards—ensuring your time, effort, and money are respected at every stage of the process. Let us both give our very best to the engagement.
A fruitful relationship between us requires active participation from both sides. If your current schedule makes it difficult to commit to scheduled sessions and timely communication, it may be best for you to wait for a time when you can fully engage in the process.
Project Swarajya Would Be Of Value To You If...
1. You have the desire to learn money management, but lack the confidence to execute. You bring the desire. Project Swarajya will give you the knowledge. Knowledge breeds confidence. And with confidence, you would be able to execute calmly and consistently.
2. You view financial planning as a serious, continuous exercise and not as a one time quick fix.
3. You want an unbiased, objective opinion on your current financial situation.
4. You wish to learn money management with a view to becoming a DIY (Do It Yourself) investor in the future.
5. You need help defining and prioritising your financial goals.
6. You would like help to design a road map that enables you to achieve those goals.
7. You need help picking investment products that are optimally aligned to your goals.
8. You are a DIY investor who wants professional help to evaluate and validate your investment decisions and money management practices.
You Would Not Find Value In Project Swarajya If...
1. You wish to simply maximise your returns, or have unrealistic return expectations (10%, 15%, 20% or more post tax on the entire portfolio). Financial planning is aimed at giving you a reasonable chance of having enough money for all your goals (provided that they are realistic), not the highest returns. My approach to financial planning can reasonably be expected to provide a long term return of around 12% before tax, equating to around 8.5% post tax on the entire portfolio (equity+debt). This means your portfolio has a reasonable chance of beating headline inflation by around 2.5% post tax over the long term (assuming headline inflation is 6%). This is more than sufficient to give you a reasonable chance of having enough money for your goals.
2. You want me to offer advice on or manage your domestic and/or global direct equity portfolio. These services are better offered by stock brokers or portfolio managers. Financial planning is a much more evolved and holistic service. Also, my objective is to make you a confident and independent DIY investor. If I give you stock recommendations, you will keep coming back to me for recommendations on both new stocks and existing stocks in your portfolio. Therefore you will never truly be independent, no matter how knowledgeable or confident you become about managing your money.
3. You are looking to trade in stocks or derivatives. Both of these activities are too complex, costly and risky for most individuals to do them well.
4. You are looking for advice on hedge funds, PMS, AIF, cryptocurrencies and other structured or unregulated products. These products are extremely complex and go against the interests of most retail investors. Recommending them would therefore mean that I am compromising my fiduciary responsibility as a financial planner.
5. You are looking for help with regard to startup investing, angel investing and private equity. Corporate finance falls outside the scope of my services.
6. You want me to build a Shariah compliant portfolio for you. This is not meant to hurt anyone's religious sentiments. I recommend debt instruments and interest bearing securities to clients, to ensure balance in their portfolios. But debt instruments and interest bearing securities go against Shariah laws. So someone looking for a Shariah compliant portfolio may not find value in working with me.
7. You want me to offer advice on assets funded through black money. Black money is illegal and so therefore is advising on assets funded with it.
8. You insist on meeting me in person for introductory meetings, financial planning sessions and/or financial plan presentations. I serve clients across the world. Therefore I mostly conduct my meetings online. Conducting physical meetings involves the risk of travel times for both parties and last minute rescheduling of meetings by the client. In either of these cases, it becomes very hard for me to rework my appointments for the rest of the day. All meetings with clients would therefore be conducted completely online via voice or video calls.
9. You expect sessions to be rescheduled as per your convenience if you miss/reschedule/are unavailable for sessions. To give you and all my clients client dedicated time and focus, all sessions for engagements can be scheduled upfront at your convenience, subject to my availability. Sessions may be rescheduled as per the norms mentioned in the section titled Rescheduling Sessions later on this page.
10. You want me to offer you a discount on the first year advisory fee of Rs 25,000 or the renewal fee of Rs 12,000. The fixed fee model of financial planning inherently operates at a deep discount compared to other models. Therefore there is no further scope for discounts.
11. You are looking for guidance on overseas tax laws. Overseas tax laws fall outside the scope of my services.
12. You are a prospective client who is looking for a sample financial plan to understand what the final financial plan you recieve would look like. A sample plan would at best be a skeletal version of the final plan delivered to a client at the end of an engagement. So it would give you very little perspective with regard to what you should expect as the final output. Therefore I do not provide a sample plan to prospective clients.
13. You expect frequent frequent portfolio reviews and tracking on monthly/quarterly/semi annual basis. Frequent portfolio reviews and tracking is something you get as part of wealth management services. Financial planning is completely different from wealth management. Your financial plan aligns your portfolio to your goals. Therefore the only situations where your plan would be reviewed during the year are as follows :
A. There is something that goes fundamentally wrong with one or more investment products recommended to you.
B. There is a change in your financial goals during the year.
C. There is a permanent change in your life situation during the year, owing to life events (for example marriage, birth of one or more children, death of an earning member in the household)
In absence of the instances mentioned above, an annual review of your financial plan would be more than sufficient.
14. You wish to ask specific questions regarding your finances during the initial introductory call. The introductory call is meant for me to understand your case and needs for financial planning services. It is meant for you to understand my service offerings and style of working. Specific questions on your finances can be properly answered only when I have a detailed understanding of your financial position. This can happen only once we have begun working on the engagement. It would be irresponsible on my part to answer such questions before then. Therefore specific questions on your finances will not be answered.
A few examples of specific questions regarding your finances include (but are not limited to) :
Is this stock/mutual fund/investment product/insurance policy a good fit for me?
What tax benefits can I avail of given the facts of my case?
What percentage of my portfolio should I hold in equity/debt/any other asset class in light of my financial goals?
15. You seek my advice on a solitary aspect, or select few aspects of your finances. I offer comprehensive financial planning services, which cover all aspects of your finances. Also, the fee you are charged will not be lowered because you are coming to me with limited requirements. Therefore you may not find value in working with me in such a case.
16. You are looking to reach out for a one time consultation. I do not offer my services on a one time basis. It would take the duration of a full engagement for me to fully understand your case and offer responsible advice.
17. You are looking for a portfolio tracker or similar tools as part of the engagement or final financial plan. Such tools are offered by wealth managers, not financial planners.
18. You are looking for my advice to set up or manage an HUF (Hindu Undivided Family). A Chartered Accountant or legal professional would be better equipped to help you with this, not a financial planner.
Onboarding Process Before Initiation Of Project Swarajya
Before initiating an engagement with a client, I am required to complete an onboarding process for the client. The process is divided into 4 phases.
Phase 1 - We have a 30 minute introductory call. Introductory calls will be conducted between 1 PM IST and 5:30 PM IST on weekdays, and between 10:30 AM IST and 1 PM IST on Saturdays. If you confirm that you would like to proceed with the engagement I email my Letter of Engagement to you, the prospective client. The letter would contain the terms and conditions that would govern our advisory engagement. Should you choose to accept the terms of the engagement, you are required to sign the Letter of Engagement in the space that would be provided. The date of signature must also be clearly mentioned. The letter may be signed physically or digitally. Once both parties have duly signed the Letter of engagement, you would pay the first year advisory fee of Rs 25,000.
Phase 2 : Once the fee is paid, I would next require a soft copy of certain KYC details and documents as prescribed by SEBI for my records. With regard to this, I would require a copy of your :
1. PAN Card
2. Aadhaar Card
The documents must be sent via email.
Phase 3 : I would then send you a risk profiling questionnaire that will allow me to guage and understand your risk profile as an individual and thereby determine an investment strategy and financial plan that is optimally suited to you. The questionnaire contains a set of multiple choice questions. There are no right or wrong answers to the questions in the questionnaire. You would be required to pick the alternative that is most suited to you.
You may highlight your answers within the questionnaire and send it back to me. Alternatively, you may also take a print out of the questionnaire, fill up the questionnaire with your answers and send a scanned copy of the filled up questionnaire back to me.
Phase 4 : Once I recieve the filled up questionnaire, I would prepare and share my risk profile assessment report with you. It would contain my opinion with regard to your risk profile. Along with the report I would also send across the financial data collection sheet. This is a basic excel sheet designed to capture your basic financial data (income, expenses, investments, insurance etc). Preparing both documents would take a week to 10 days from the date of obtaining the duly filled questionnaire. This is because both documents have be prepared from scratch. You would fill out the data collection sheet shared with you and send it back. Once this is done, the onboarding process would be complete. At this point we may begin the engagement.
How Project Swarajya Works
After the onboarding process is completed, the engagement would begin. I first send you an Excel sheet to collect your financial data. Once you send back the duly filled data collection sheet, the main engagement begins. When we work together, a typical first year engagement is divided into 2 phases
Phase 1 - Here we do 5 sessions together of 45 to 60 minutes each. All financial planning sessions and plan presentation sessions are conducted between 10:30 AM IST and 1 PM IST on weekdays. This allows me enough time for analytical effort over the rest of the day and ensures maximum operational efficiency
Session 1 : Assessing Your Financial Foundation
We discuss the concepts and principles that govern your emergency fund, life insurance and health insurance. We also assess the adequacy of these three foundational pillars of your finances.
Session 2 : Equity Portfolio Construction
We review your existing equity portfolio. We also discuss the concepts and principles that govern the equity portfolio we build for you (Defensive Investing, Index Funds, Market Efficiency, Cost Consciousness and so on).
Session 3 : Debt Portfolio Construction And Portfolio Management
We review your existing debt portfolio. We also discuss the concepts and principles that govern the debt portfolio we build for you. We finish by discussing concepts and principles that govern portfolio management at the net worth level (Defensive Investing, Liquid Funds, Credit Risk, Interest Rate Risk, Portfolio Rebalancing, Portfolio Derisking and so on).
Session 4 : Goal Planning Session
We help you understand what your goals are and how they should be prioritised. We also help you figure out how much to invest for each of your goals. We also discuss the principles that govern your goal planning calculations for the current year (Zero Real Returns and Back Of The Envelope Calculations)
I then take a few days to prepare your financial plan. It would be based on the data shared by you and my major findings during Phase 1. Exact timelines for plan preparation would vary based on the complexity of each case. The financial plan would be in the form of an Excel sheet. It would contain my recommendations with regard to various areas of your finances. The rationale, suitability and reasoning behind each recommendation would also be clearly explained. Any supporting calculations would be included in the Excel sheet.
Session 5 : Plan Presentation Session
You receive your final financial plan with all your major financial planning recommendations for the year. This session marks the end of the initial engagement. After this, I would present the final financial plan to you for execution. This may take another few days.
Sessions are allotted on a first come first served basis across all clients looking to schedule sessions at a given point in time. It ensures that all of my clients looking to schedule sessions have a fair chance to do so. The first session of the engagement would be conducted within a few weeks from the date of submission of the duly filled data collection sheet. This is because I would need to complete existing client engagements that are pending at that point of time. You will be given the option to schedule all your sessions upfront. In such a case sessions would be allotted as per your discretion, subject to my availability. In most cases where all sessions are scheduled upfront AND sessions are not missed or rescheduled, the engagement would be completed within 2-3 weeks from the date of the first session.
Phase 2 : Post Plan Presentation - After the plan is presented to you for execution. Need based consultation would be available to you for the remaining portion of the first 12 months of the engagement. It would be upto you to contact me for support and/or clarifications anytime you feel the need for it. I would contact you whenever there is a significant event that affects you and/or your financial plan. After the first 12 months, you are welcome to return for a renewal engagement.
Renewal Engagement - When you renew an engagement, you automatically activate the benefit of need based consultation for another year. You also receive the option to come in for a single 60 minute review session anywhere over the course of the year. Such sessions are conducted on weekdays between 10:30 AM IST and 1 PM IST. Here we conduct a full fledged review of how well you have followed your plan, your life situation and your goals. The action plan for the forthcoming year is then charted out. Any changes required to your plan will be made before being sent back to you. From there you can go back to following your plan as you had during the previous year. Need based consultation will remain available to you throughout the rest of the year.
Pricing And Periodicity Of Services
I offer a fee only advisory model. The fee structure has been designed keeping the clients’ best interests in mind, in compliance with SEBI regulations. The fee structure has been given in detail as follows:
First Year Advisory Fee : The advisory fee would be Rs 12,000 for the year.
The basis for the fee that I charge clients is the amount of time and effort I spend on the client's case.
You shall be charged on a uniform basis for my time and effort. I currently put in 12 hours of time and effort on a client's case during a first year engagement. You will be charged evenly across the 12 hours of effort. The 12 hours are broken down as follows :
Initial Engagement : 5 sessions. A session implies a period of one hour. A grace period of 5 minutes beyond the scheduled end time will be offered to duly complete the call, subject to the advisor's availability. Beyond this, the total elapsed session time will be deducted from the total amount of time allotted to the client’s engagement (12 hours) on a pro rated basis.
You are allowed a grace period of 5 minutes from the scheduled start time of each session. Being late by 5 minutes or more will be considered absence for the session. In such a case the session and associated backend effort would be deemed as services rendered and deducted from your total engagement time of 12 hours. The contents of the session would then be covered over the remaining sessions of the engagement. But this may reduce the quality of the engagement from your perspective. You cannot ask for the session to be conducted later on the same day or rescheduled as per your convenience. This is simply because I have successive meetings on most days. Therefore allowing more than 5 minutes of grace time and/or rescheduling as per your convenience would be impractical for me.
Backend effort : 1 hour before each session, broken down as follows :
Session 1 : Reviewing client's financial data
Session 2 : Emergency Funds and Insurance Analysis in the financial plan
Session 3 : Portfolio Review
Session 4 : Goal planning calculations
Session 5 : Financial Plan
Total backend effort = 5 hours
Need based consultation at the client’s discretion, after the completion of the initial engagement : 2 hours (based on observed trends)
Therefore the breakup of the advisory fee for a duly completed first year engagement is as follows :
First Year Fee – 25,000/12 = Rs 2,083 per hour of effort.
Renewal Engagement (Follow up engagement after the first 12 months) : Rs 12,000 payable upfront at the beginning of the engagement.
You will be eligible to avail the renewal fee only if ALL 3 conditions given below are satisfied :
1. The full first year engagement has been completed, AND the financial planning recommendations for the first year have been implemented
2. You are renewing the engagement after exactly one year
3. There are no major changes in your requirements from the previous year to this year.
Failing this, I would need to put in the same level of effort with you, as I would with someone coming to me for the first time. You will therefore be charged the full first year fee of Rs 25,000. Cash payment of fees would not be accepted. Fees may be paid via any recognised banking channel (NEFT/RTGS/IMPS/UPI)
If you wish to miss/reschedule/remain unavailable for sessions, I will need prior notice of at least 2 hours before the scheduled start time of the session. This would leave me with enough time to offer your slot to other clients who may be looking to schedule sessions at that point of time. This would allow my time to be utilised in the most productive way possible. Therefore :
If you miss/reschedule/remain unavailable for sessions with prior notice of 2 hours or more from the scheduled start time of the session, the session will be rescheduled as per my availability. In such a case, please keep the following in mind :
Strictly Availability-Based Booking: Rescheduled sessions will be moved to the next available open slot on my calendar. Because my schedule is fully booked weeks in advance, I cannot accommodate requests for specific, preferred dates and/or timings for rescheduled meetings. You will need to select from the exact slots that are open at a given point in time.
Calendar Gaps: Please keep in mind that relying on the next available open slot may result in a gap of a few weeks before our next meeting.
Cancellations & Openings: If an earlier slot opens up due to calendar changes, I will gladly offer it to you, and if you are available we can connect.
If you miss/reschedule/remain unavailable for sessions with prior notice of anything less than 2 hours from the scheduled start time of the session, the session and associated back end effort would be deemed as services rendered and deducted from your total engagement time of 12 hours. The contents of the session would then be covered over the remaining sessions of the engagement. But this may reduce the quality of the engagement from your perspective. To complete the engagement at the earliest and have the best possible experience, I encourage you to stick to your original session times whenever possible.
Premature Termination : In case of a voluntary and premature termination of the engagement by either of us, the party terminating the agreement is required to provide immediate written notice of the same. In case of the agreement being prematurely terminated, you will receive a proportionate refund for the unexpired portion of the engagement. The unexpired portion of the engagement would be the remaining number of hours of effort attributable to your engagement at the time of termination. I reserve the expressed right to terminate the engagement immediately if you frequently miss/reschedule/remain unavailable for sessions with prior notice of anything less than 2 hours from the scheduled start time of the session. I am entitled to retain a breakage fee of 25% of the applicable advisory fee for the year in the event of premature termination.
The processes, fees, and mutual expectations detailed on this page have been carefully designed to ensure that you and all my other clients receive the highest standard of service and objective advice. To maintain fairness, integrity, and efficiency for everyone I work with, these policies are applied uniformly to all engagements. Therefore, please note that I cannot accommodate requests for exceptions to anything mentioned on this page.