MONDAY, MAY 20, 2013
Business
NESTLE INVESTS $130 MN IN MEXICO PLANT Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto inaugurated a 1.6-billionpeso ($130-million) expansion of a Nestle instant coffee factory in the central city of Toluca.
ENTREPRENEURSHIP
Click to script success
Sanjiv Singhal’s and WS Ravishankar’s Scripbox enables you to invest in mutual funds with the click of a button sitting at your home or office.
PRUDHVI RAJU K prudhvi.k@postnoon.com
W
ant to invest in mutual funds but worried about the complexity in choosing the right fund and the credibility of the seller/advisor? Here is a chance to invest in mutual funds with the click of a button through Scripbox by sitting at your home or in office. Atul Shinghal, Sanjiv Singhal and WS Ravishankar started scripbox.com late last year to make investing simple and transparent. Talking about the strength of idea, Sanjiv says, “The core idea is to simplify mutual fund investing. Most of the customers find mutual fund investing too complex and face difficulty in understanding the jargon, type of funds and at times, they fall prey to misselling. With this service, the customer gets an opportunity to invest in four scientifically selected mutual funds effortlessly online. We leverage the power of technology to filter the top performing funds and use the power of internet to distribute the same, making investing in mutual funds simple and convenient.” The business took birth in a way to find a solution to an existing problem. “Most of the times, the distributor sells the mutual funds, which gets him higher commissions. The idea is to bring transparency in selling and build trust with customers over time. Investing, withdrawing and getting statements are all at the click of a button. The performance of selected funds is monitored and reviewed regularly,” explains Atul. Attracting first customers is always a challenge for any business. “By word of mouth, the spread of trust will bring more customers over time. Our focus is to tap the investment poten-
13
ACQUISITION
Yahoo! to buy blog-maker Tumblr for $1.1 bn: Report NEW YORK, Yahoo!'s board has approved a deal to purchase the popular blogging platform Tumblr for $1.1 billion in cash, The Wall Street Journal reported Sunday. The deal, if confirmed, would be the largest for Yahoo! since Marissa Mayer took over as chief executive last year and could help the struggling Internet pioneer regain traction with younger Internet users. Neither Yahoo! nor Tumblr commented on the report. But Mayer has scheduled a news conference in New York on Monday at which the company said it will unveil “something special." Yahoo! has been looking at a range of acquisitions since Mayer took over as chief executive last year and vowed to revive the company, which has faded in the face of competition from Google.
NUMEROLOGY
`348
cr
is the net profit posted by the Karnataka Bank for the financial year 2012-13, showing a growth rate of 41.46 per cent.
TAX EVASION
Sanjiv Singhal (left) and Atul Shinghal, founders of Scripbox.com.
tial of common people who have decent amounts of money but do not know how to go about investing in mutual funds. They can start investing with amounts as low as `4,000 per month. With our offering, online investing can become part and parcel of life as social media and e-commerce have become today,” says Ravi. Atul Shinghal, Sanjiv Singhal and WS Ravishankar are alumni of IIM Bangalore. Their long experience with finance and technology industry is proving to be an advantage in building the business. “The selection of funds is based on an algorithm developed using historical data. The back-testing of the algorithm has shown that
THE COMPANY IS AIMING TO BE AMONG THE TOP
100 DISTRIBUTORS BY
THE END OF THIS FINANCIAL YEAR AND IS EXPECTING OPERATIONAL BREAKEVEN IN NEXT 18 MONTHS. funds selected through it could have outperformed the market since 2005. With over 5,500 mutual funds, selecting the best out of them is definitely a difficult task. “We are working with 35 companies, each of which has around 40 funds. Thus, we have
a list of 1400 funds. Out of them, we select only four funds. We work on a revenue model wherein the company does not charge the customer but gets between 0.3-0.7 per cent commission from the mutual fund companies,” says Sanjiv. On future prospects, he said, “The potential is huge in the country with only 2 per cent of the population having invested in mutual funds. The strength of the idea along with the potential for growth in mutual fund investing will grow the business.” The company is aiming to be among the top 100 distributors by the end of this financial year and is expecting operational breakeven in next 18 months.
GOLD `25,700 10g SILVER `41,100 1kg
24C
for
for
DOLLAR `55.00 POUND `83.29
Google boss defends UK tax arrangements LONDON: Google’s executive chairman Eric Schmidt on Sunday defended the US Internet giant’s tax arrangements after claims it has unethically dodged paying vast amounts of British tax. Writing in Britain’s Observer newspaper, Schmidt insisted that Google “has always aspired to do the right thing” and that the company pays “significant” amounts of British corporate, local and employment tax. But he added: “International tax law could almost certainly benefit from reform."
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