Angel One targets young non-metro Indians with new brand Fin One's content game

An in-house team led by Paarth Dhar looks to capture this cohort with fun and informational content.

India’s increasing love for investing and trading over the past few years  - an April ’24  Mint report says the total number of demat accounts jumped to 15.1 crore, a new high, in March - has spawned a new allied industry of sorts - peddlers of financial literacy.

As the number of people entering the financial markets increased, so did the teachers and gurus preaching about where to invest, what to buy, what to sell, and what to avoid. Their dissemination mediums? YouTube videos, Instagram Reels, Twitter threads, and groups on messaging apps such as WhatsApp and Telegram. 

The outpour of information - sometimes misinformation - reached such levels that the Advertising Standards Council of India, the country’s ad watchdog, brought out guidelines instructing financial influencers to register themselves with the market regulator, the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) last year.

“Decluttering and navigating through all of the information has become prime,” says Paarth Dhar, VP, Angel One. 

He was speaking to us (afaqs!) about Fin One, the 28-year-old financial services company’s new brand offering which wants to use content to build affinity with Gen Zs and late millennials from India’s Tier II regions and beyond.

Dhar joined Angel One when it acquired the fintech company DStreet Finance he co-founded with Suresh Bavisetti in November last year to focus on content generation for the young audience.

Such a demographic as the choice of the target group is not some random chit-pick out of a jar. When it comes to new users, be it week on week or month on month on Angel One, “a very large percentage (north of 80%) comes from Tier II and beyond and is a younger demographic,” reveals Dhar. 

Also, this particular cohort is often not given the much-needed attention, he feels, considering their wallet size on most occasions cannot match the ones of 35-year-olds. 

Fin One aims to build a relationship with this cohort between the ages of 18-29 (25 being the average age) early on. “Content is our first piece and kicking it off with our social channels.”

A cursory glance at the content of Fin One’s Instagram page reveals it is, as of now, mostly fun light-hearted content. Dhar is the oldest member of the in-house team which creates the content.  

“User empathy is very high as far as an internal team is concerned and it reflects in the content,” states the vice president and says the work they put out will mostly be in Hindi because a lot of comments, even on Angel One’s posts, ask for Hindi content. 

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“We, as a brand, have a higher reach in the ‘Hindi heartland’. A lot of our users also come from the Southern States as well as the North Eastern state,” he reveals. Fin One, he says, will use artificial intelligence to translate the videos to different langauges and to create English subtitles.

Instagram, for the time being, is Fin One’s primary media distribution vehicle because the fun and light-hearted content (read short-form videos) it is focusing on right now stands to engage more viewers on the Meta-owned platform than Facebook or Google-owned YouTube. 

Fin One will, after a while, start doling out long-form content more suited for Google’s video-sharing platform. How to decode a DRHP or how to practically read the P&L of a company are examples of the long-form content Fin One will put out. 

“Fin One will never be advisory,” stresses Dhar and that its content will always revolve around being informational and fun. It will focus on its social media channels but from time to time see itself on Angel One’s Super App. 

While Dhar remains wary of individuals who put out information with selfish intentions, it does not mean the Angel One brand will never work with influencers. “When they interact with us or feature on our content series, there are no opinions shared when it comes to investments or financial decisions, it might be a light-hearted take or information shared,” says Dhar. 

There are no immediate monetary goals for Fin One. “To become a certain size with X number of followers is not our aim. It is to add value even if it's a small cohort,” he remarks.