Click To Save, Tap To Invest

As more young professionals discover mutual funds as an attractive option to park their savings, demand for easier ways to invest and manage money has given rise to a whole ecosystem of wealth management apps.

- Jui Mukherjee

Got some spare cash and want to invest in mutual funds (MFs), but don’t know how to go about it? You’re in luck. In a world where there’s an app for everything, including one to remind you when to drink water, investing is just a click and tap away.

Over the past few years, a host of wealth management apps have sprung up with more young professionals discovering MFs as an attractive option to park their savings and looking for easier ways to invest and manage their money. Both established players and new entrepreneurs are tapping the growing demand for systematic investment plans (SIPs) and MFs, along with the tools to invest in them. In the past one year itself, India has witnessed a boom in this space with several apps such as ETMoney, Fund Easy, and more recently Angel Broking’s Angel Bee hitting the market.

What exactly do these wealth management apps do? Quite a lot, actually. To begin with, they help you manage your expenses, create a budget, calculate your taxes, and even pay your bills automatically. But, more importantly, they advise you on where to park your money, tell you the pros and cons of debt vs equity, track your investments, and suggest whether to buy/sell or hold your investments. All on your smartphone. And it doesn’t matter whether you’re investing just 5,000 or 5 crore. “Only 1.5% of Indians invest in MFs, the best way to build long-term wealth. Therefore, there is a need to educate individuals, especially the increasing number of young earners,” says co-founder and chief executive of Scripbox, Ashok Kumar. In mature markets such as the U.S. this figure is more than 45%.