nikhilmantha

Hello! We have an offer running currently where when you invite 5 friends to complete sign up through us then all transactions via Piggy are free for you for life.

Also regarding your investments. They are all in your name. You get the final allotment statements directly from the fund houses to your email. You can also generate consolidated investment statements by yourself. So in absence of Piggy you can still buy and sell your investments. We've just made it easier for you to do so.

Thanks! We'll look into it. Try our Android app if you can. That is up to date. iOS app will be up to speed soon.

Basically there are two plans in Mutual Funds. Direct and Regular. Both have the same securities, manager, structure etc. Only difference is that Fund houses pay commissions to agents on sale of regular plans, while there are no commission s on Direct plans. These commissions are counted as expenses towards the funds. The more the expenses the less the return. And these expenses are compounding hence the loss of return is also compounding. Scripbox provides only regular plans where they take commissions(Commission rates mentioned in the link). So while nothing is going from investor's pocket, the investor is taking a sizeable hit in their returns!

How do you differentiate between the two plans? Look for the word 'Direct' in direct plans of mutual funds.

Our web is getting built as we speak. It should be up soon enough.

We focussed most of our efforts on mobile till now because as a country we skipped desktops and jumped to mobile first.

Regarding demat for Mutual Funds let's look at it this way. NonDemat MutualFunds is also paperless and you get consolidated mutual fund statements nowadays. So there is no additional advantage of investing in only funds via Demat route plus you have to pay for it.

Less than 1 % Indians have participated in capital markets and mostly through mutual funds. So at this point our focus is on keeping things simple.

Do take a look at the charges section in our app. We have something out there that might work for you! :)

Also We focussed on building an easy to use app with seamless transaction platform that supports all fund houses first. The cake is in place. We will be adding a lot more over this.

Thank you for taking time out for all the detailed feedback!

Hello balladeer! We do understand your concerns. The industry infrastructure needs a lot of upgrade especially the funds industry. Also the payment gateways need to improve a lot.

Infact this has been our prime focus at Piggy. We have been optimising and automating our operations as much as possible to ensure that the users never face any trouble. And we completely support our customers with any issues and sort them out as we work closely with the exchanges and other intermediaries.

Hi Naval.This is an extremely interesting question! Even when we were applying, we didn't think from this angle! :)

Why YC made sense to us was because of it's network of super smart people who have seen a lot, done a lot. We want to build a really good product that solves a big pain point in India. YC helps tremendously in building good products with it's people and resources at hand. Also it is a great environment for founders to learn things in a concentrated way beyond tangible sources such as books, videos and blogs. It becomes like a bootcamp for us. In the end founders are people who need to keep up to build a great company! :) YC gives a jumpstart. All the trust building with customers will come by providing a great service first, then by all the traditional and non traditional media means.

Do take a look at the charges section in our app. We have something out there that might work for you! :)

Hello! Thanks for taking time to give us a detailed feedback. The pricing for all the services will remain competitive I'm sure. To start off with we made the app simple for people to use and on mobile as a lot of people would like to manage their portfolio on the go. We have received a lot of positive feedback on that.

Regarding your point on ETF you're correct. ETFs are a low cost option in the long run and are ideal for retirement. But that is primarily true in developed markets currently where it is difficult for most managers to beat the indices. In India atleast for now actively managed mutual funds are providing more returns than the index. As our markets develop we would converge with the trends of the developed markets.

Having said that we would definitely be adding meaningful products for our customers on the app! Do give it a try and let us know what you think.

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.

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. Thanks again for your encouragement! :)

Thanks a lot jameshk! Currently there aren't any major roadblocks from a regulatory point of view. Infact the Indian market regulator is bringing forth many forward looking regulations and introducing the concept of fiduciary responsibility in India.

True. But commissions are counted in the expenses towards the fund. So basically the NAV of the fund is nothing but the income of the fund minus the expenses. So more the expenses, less the NAV, less the return to the investor. In the end investor/user is paying for those commissions.

Also our investments can be currently only in Indian Rupees. All these are based on regulations by the Indian Markets regulator 'Securities Exchange Board Of India' or SEBI