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Launch HN: Piggy (YC S17) – Investment App for India

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Re: Launch HN: Piggy (YC S17) – Investment App for India

#31

Post by nikhilmantha »

yumraj wrote: post #30

If you want people to trust you with their money, you need to tell me more about yourself. There is no mention, at least none that I could find, about the Team, what is their background and why should I trust them.

Fair point Yumraj! We will definitely do so in future updates of our website. We have been in ultra stealth mode before coming to YC. Till date we have acquired all our customers organically. The quality of our service has primarily brought that trust in our users who have invested millions of $ via the app.

Re: Launch HN: Piggy (YC S17) – Investment App for India

#33

Post by sinanku »

calvinbhai wrote: post #32

What protections do investors have? Stock trading apps in US are part of FINRA and SIPC. Anything similar with Piggy?

Hey, Investors protection in India is enforced by SEBI (Indian capital market regulator). AMFI is the self-regulatory body to enforce regulation and adherence to codes in mutual funds Industry in India.

Re: Launch HN: Piggy (YC S17) – Investment App for India

#34

Post by navalsaini »

Why YC?

Its an app focussed in India, I was wondering why would you need YC. It certainly must be a great experience and is a brand among people in startup world (doubt beyond it), but unless you have imminent global plans does it still make a compelling sense. And does the YC brand help you establish a trust factor in India, more than TV advertisements, or celebs like a cricketer or etc as your brand ambassador.

I would certainly want to YC, if I had a product that I want people in US/Canada/Europe to use.

Re: Launch HN: Piggy (YC S17) – Investment App for India

#35

Post by fgpwd »

I currently use zerodha for investing in mutual funds. Both offer direct funds. There are no transaction charges with zerodha coin, no demat charges either, but they do charge a flat monthly fee of Rs.50, regardless of the number of transactions or funds you invest in. With piggy, as per their website, the fee is Rs.30 per transaction for every time you buy a fund, and Rs.100 per year for every fund you SIP. RS.3 for every time you buy a liquid fund.

So piggy turns out to be cheaper for most people who would start an SIP with 2-3 mutual funds. Since I guess most people won't have needs that extend beyond this, piggy is probably the cheapest platform to buy mutual funds. However, for someone expecting a larger number of transactions or SIP with more than 6 funds, zerodha would turn out to be cheaper. Also, if instead of an SIP, for some reason you wish to invest a different amount every month, zerodha would turn out to be cheaper.

A big advantage of having a zerodha account is that I can also invest in index ETFs which I feel are much safer than mutual funds for the long term. Index mutual funds have very high expense ratios of more than 1%, but in comparison the index ETFs have lower expenses, like the NIFTYBEES etf has an expense ratio of just 0.1%. The SBI NIFTY etf has an expense ratio of 0.05%. There are no exit loads or transaction charges. These are passive funds that just track the basket of companies in the NIFTY index.

I think index ETFs should also form an important portion of a person's long term/retirement investment portfolio, apart from mutual funds.

Re: Launch HN: Piggy (YC S17) – Investment App for India

#36

Post by balladeer »

fgpwd wrote: post #35

I currently use zerodha for investing in mutual funds. Both offer direct funds. There are no transaction charges with zerodha coin, no demat charges either, but they do charge a flat monthly fee of Rs.50, regardless of the number of transactions or funds you invest in. With piggy, as per their website, the fee is Rs.30 per transaction for every time you buy a fund, and Rs.100 per year for every fund you SIP. RS.3 for…

You are forgetting that Zerodha needs you have a demat account and then you pay for it. Because you can't do MF with Zerodha w/o a demat account (can do so with many other brokers).

Also, for this monthly charge Zerodha doesn't provide any analytics or advisory while many other direct fund providers, at a similar monthly cost, do (and couple of them won't even ask you to have a demat a/c and pay for it).

Re: Launch HN: Piggy (YC S17) – Investment App for India

#37

Post by balladeer »

navalsaini wrote: post #34

Why YC? Its an app focussed in India, I was wondering why would you need YC. It certainly must be a great experience and is a brand among people in startup world (doubt beyond it), but unless you have imminent global plans does it still make a compelling sense. And does the YC brand help you establish a trust factor in India, more than TV advertisements, or celebs like a cricketer or etc as your brand ambassador. I w…

I am not sure but maybe the people who later might help this company or required for its success - future VCs, top talents they would want to hire, press coverage and all - might be influenced by the YC tag and it might work for Piggy in this way. And the YC networking as they say.

Re: Launch HN: Piggy (YC S17) – Investment App for India

#38

Post by balladeer »

nikhilmantha wrote: post #29
amruta2799 wrote: post #26

Sounds interesting! I have been researching the investment apps here in the US, and was waiting for a similar solution back home in India. I think it's about time Indian investors get the technology-backed investing experience. Well done guys! My two cents: AFAIK, Indians still believe in traditional investment methods like bank deposits and gold. Along with providing the facility to diversify their investments, you…

Thanks a lot Amruta! You are absolutely right. MF industry has reached $300B assets with just under 1% population investing while over $800B sit in bank assets. The penetration is super low. We are definitely looking to educate our users in creative ways. First we focussed on building a simple app to sign up and use and create a seamless platform for transactions. Now we have big plans to build over this platform. Th…

I have working for around 7% and my 100% savings sit in PPF, FD and now recently started in NPS.

I really never felt comfortable with any service with which I can have complete control and freedom to transact. I had tried IIFL back in the day and after 3 months putting decent amount of money I wanted to sell some SUZLON shares one day when the price was at 5x of what I had bought at. Transactions failed, kept failing throughout the day. 7 days later I got a one line response saying it was a glitch. Exited after few days and closed the account. Never went back to trading again.

I mean I see the numbers and % of returns I will get but how can I trust the industry where interfaces, that I want to be in that industry, are so unreliable.

Re: Launch HN: Piggy (YC S17) – Investment App for India

#39

Post by balladeer »

nikhilmantha wrote: post #10
nikant wrote: post #8

How is this different than the already available solutions in the market like Scripbox?

Hey Nikant! When you invest Rs.10000 with Scripbox, they take 0.5-1.5% commission on that investment every year as long as 10000 remains invested and to whatever that amount grows to. So you are paying compounding commissions. Most Indians aren't aware of this. We don't take these hidden commissions. We charge a one time fee. Also Scripbox offers a limited set of funds while we offer products from all fund houses. So…

A point to be noted here is: Scripbox keeps getting that commission even after you have left Scripbox and stopped using it.

Same with FundsIndia etc. I would say, avoid any MF that is not direct. the long term hidden cost is staggering.

@Nikhil Congrts and just a feedback: I would have been very much interested if you had a monthly fee plan like Zerodha Coin and also offered advisory and analytics like Invezta, ORO etc. They all offer direct plans.

Re: Launch HN: Piggy (YC S17) – Investment App for India

#40

Post by balladeer »

nikhilmantha wrote: post #14
esteer wrote: post #12

Why should I use Piggy over Coin by Zerodha? What are the important differences?

Hello esteer! Thanks for your question. Important Difference. 1. Coin is based on Zerodha's kite platform and requires a demat account for investments. There are multiple disadvantages of using a demat account for mutual funds, one of them being transaction costs on every transaction from demat as well. The others are difficulty in estate planning and also your movement options to other services would be restricted i…

You don't have a web portal?

Also, could you please expand upon demat disadvantages? How much is that demat txn charge? I think it's kinda insignificant.

Also, from a user point of view, if one has a demat account with Zerodha they can also do stocks with the same account without having to pay for demat again with another provider, right?

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