Daybreak - India's Northeast millionaires have BS detectors. Wealth managers are learning that the hard way

Episode Date: March 22, 2026

India's Northeast has always had money. Wealth managers are only now showing up to court it, and finding the welcome chillier than expected. Post-GST, a wave of newly banked business wealth is looking for a home. Sophisticated products like AIFs, PMS, bonds, are finding takers. But Northeastern millionaires play by different rules. They don't respond to cold calls. They don't trust outsiders easily. And they have little patience for managers who can't answer basic questions.So what does it actually take to win a client here — and why are so many wealth managers still getting it wrong?Tune in. Daybreak is produced from the newsroom of The Ken, India’s first subscriber-only business news platform. Subscribe for more exclusive, deeply-reported, and analytical business stories. 🚨The Ken's Zero Shot podcast is hosting a live event! This is a speculative yet realistic discussion built around one premise: what happens when AI agents take off in India? How will they rewire existing habits, business models and profit pools? Since nobody knows for sure, we won't pretend to have all the answers. Instead we are going to break the narrative. Click here for details. 

Are you from a business family? That's the first thing Gaurav Saria asked the wealth managers who come knocking at his door. Gorov is the founder of Infinity, a chain of tea rooms that sources its tea from Goref's own estates in Assam and Dajiling. And as it happens, that question is also the first thing he asked the ken before he sat down for a chat. He told my colleague, reporter Nuha, that his logic is pretty simple. If you're from a business family, you understand money. Otherwise, you don't.

Now, Gaurov's exact kind of mindset is why references are everything in the wealth management business. Past clients and proven track records, these are the holy grail for wealth managers in the northeast. Because headstrong clients like Goro from that region will accept nothing less when it comes to trusting people with their money. The thing is, a shift has been building for years. After GST, Northeastern business people started moving cash into banks and now they want to invest it.

At the same time, wealth managers have exhausted their search for the Uber Ridge in the smaller towns of the West, South and North India. Now, they're making a B-line for a region that tends to be a footnote in business plans, including financial services. And these two phenomena together

have resulted in this. A surge in sophisticated products, like alternative investment funds or AIFs and portfolio management services or PMS. We spoke to Palav Bagaria who confirmed the increase in demand for such products. Now, Palav is the director of Sapient FinCerve, which happens to be the region's largest wealth manager

with more than $4,500 cro rupees in assets. She told Noho that two years ago, AIFs and PMS were less than 5% of the company's assets under management in the northeast. Now, that number stands at 25 to 30%. But the thing is, Northeastern Etanais aren't easy clients. They are deeply wary of outsiders.

A wealth manager from Motilal Oswald told us that if you push too hard or even make a cold call, both methods which are common in Mumbai, by the way, Northeastern clients will just avoid you. Niloide, another wealth manager and executive director at Julius Baer, also added that when you go up in the hills, people only follow the advice of those they know. Another local business person put the challenge even more bluntly.

Along with the clients in the Northeast being fragmented, they also have a better bullshit detector. And for wealth managers trying to break into this fragmented, cautious circle, that makes life very hard. Welcome to Daybreak, a business podcast from the Ken. I'm your host, Rachel Ruergeese, and every day of the week, my co-host, Nikda Sharma and I will bring you one new story that is worth understanding and worth your time. Today is Monday, the 23rd of March. G.S. Road is the commercial and shopping hub of Guwah. It's kind of a more corporate version of Delhi's Khan market. But over the last two years, it's become something else entirely.

The address of choice for financial firms moving into the state. The thing is, there's no shortage of money in the Northeast, and financial firms are just now waking up to that fact. Take Rajesh Majumdar, for instance, who is the assistant vice president at IIFL Capital Services. He remembers how his boss was surprised at spotting a Mercedes showroom in Saru-Sajai, which is one of Gujarati's wealthier neighborhoods. Majumdar also noted that people outside don't realize that the region has almost every top-brand showroom there. Firms like Fisdom and Nuwama are catching on to the potential though,

especially since many northeastern clients were already investing through Kolkata and Mumbai-based managers. The thing is, with increasing financial literacy, the market has also matured over time. The older generation kept half their wealth in fixed deposits and real estate. They basically valued the tangibility of land ownership more. But the new generation thinks differently. The Motilal-Oswall wealth manager noted that young people who studied in Delhi or Mumbai come back having watched their peers invest in AIFs and PMS and want to do the same back at home. Julius Baez-Neloy Dei, who I mentioned earlier, also explained that this generation's wider exposure

means that they're talking about offshore investments and not just land. Day's own visits to the region have gone up from twice a year to twice a month. Also, bonds are another growing category. Wyshali Goenka from Sapient said that the company has started pushing bonds hard over the last two years. That's because affluent clients who fall under higher tax brackets pay less or sometimes even no tax on interest income from bonds as compared to savings accounts. Goenka also explained that post-tax, the rate of interest they get to keep, is almost 1% higher. Then, there are also clients who want more specialized guidance. Let's say a client wants to invest in healthcare,

but they don't really care for the generic mix of pharma companies and hospitals that most healthcare mutual funds offer. So, they'll choose to go to a PMS platform that can offer them a more curated collection. The returns from this can actually be pretty dramatic. Biswajit Mandel, a yes bank manager, convinced a client to swap out low-quality, stocks for an AIF, which, by the way, requires a minimum investment of 1 crore rupees. And within two years, the client's portfolio had more than doubled. But that said, old habits still die hard.

The Northeast is still very suspicious of wealth managers and their motives. And many wealth managers are still very confused about how exactly to win these clients over. More on this in the next segment. The CEO of one of the region's leading hospitality chains gets so many calls from wealth managers that, as he puts it, if my calendar allowed it, they would be happy to come every day. He's also, by his own admission, not a very profitable client. And nothing illustrates this better than one of his meetings with a banker

trying to pitch him an AIF sometime last year. The banker kept pushing different options, even as the CEO kept refusing. After an hour, the bankers, the banker got so fed up that he finally asked the CEO what was it that he exactly wanted. That's when the CEO told him he'd like to invest in a mutual fund. The banker was so caught of guard, he blurted, but there's no fees in that, before having to apologize for slipping up like that. But for the CEO, these kind of interactions are a great filter.

He said that if the managers are keen to work with clients in spite of the fact that these clients are not going to buy their high margin products, that means they are being valued long term. IIFL's Majumdar learned this the hard way as well. For two years, he made the weekly trip from Guwahati to Dimmapur to Nagaland. Monday to Friday every week, back home only on weekends. Meeting started at 8 in the morning and ran into the evening. But slowly and surely it paid off.

The clients started to call at 8 in the morning. morning to ask if Majumdar had arrived yet. They liked the way he spoke and the ideas he had. So, they were ready to invest. Now, Marjumdar knows that relationships are everything, even if it means briefly agreeing with the client's conservative outlooks. One of his 120 clients is an 85-year-old in Dimapur sitting on nearly 80-crow rupees in fixed deposits. Mahjumdar believes that at this age, there's no getting him to invest in a mutual fund. Because he just isn't aware of these things. So, all Majyadar can do is keep visiting this client and hope that at some point he may change

his mind. The Motilal-Osswal manager I mentioned earlier also said that in other cities, technical knowledge is enough. But here, trust comes first. And he's seen people run after clients for years just to build it. Though some of that difficulty comes from a different problem. the poor quality of wealth managers the Northeast has been able to attract. Stay tuned.

If you want the truth, we're underpaid and overutilized. That's what Majumda told Noha. He added that even though it's the same job that wealth managers in Kolkata or Mumbai do, the difference is that they are paid 20 to 25 lakh rupees more. That kind of a pay gap has consequences. Without adequate compensation, wealth managers default to chasing commissions. They pitch insurance and other high-margin products whether they suit the client or not. Goenka told us that mis-selling is rampant, largely because most firms lack proper training or oversight.

For instance, Siddhant Khemka, a second-generation investor, experienced this firsthand. When he was pitched an AIF, called the IFL Indian Opportunities Fund, the local partner couldn't answer any of his questions. So the firm had to fly someone in from Kolkata to finish the pitch. The thing is, there's also a way to go about these pitches. Bagaria told us, and I'm quoting here, you can't just walk up to someone and pitch an AIF. Most managers spend years with some clients, building them up to a point where they're ready, because it's important to first understand their appetite for risk and volatility. Also, the thing is, the North East has less wealth managers per H&I.

In Bangalore or Mumbai, 10 wealth managers might be chasing a single edge. Majumdar said that in the northeast, the number is closer to three. So the only real way forward seems to be word of mouth. In this fast-growing but still nascent market, a good referral remains the only way to turn someone like Infinity's Saria, who is skeptical, demanding and adamant into a long-term client. Daybreak is produced from the newsroom of the Ken India's first subscriber-focused business news platform. What you're listening to is just a small sample of our subscriber-only offerings.

A full subscription offers daily long-form feature stories, newsletters and a whole bunch of premium podcasts. To subscribe, head to the Ken.com and click on the red subscribe button on the top of the Ken website. Today's episode was hosted and produced by my colleague Rachel Vargis and edited by Rajiv Sien. Thank you.