India’s wealth management landscape is undergoing a structural reset, driven by younger HNIs, rising financialization, rapid tech adoption, and evolving investor expectations. As first-generation entrepreneurs and next-gen family office leaders enter the capital markets, the traditional relationship manager (RM)-led model is being tested by a new demand for convenience, transparency, and product depth.

In this edition of ETMarkets Smart Talk, Srikanth Subramanian, Co-Founder & CEO of Ionic Wealth, explains why the future lies not in choosing between human advice and technology, but in integrating both.

From an omnichannel strategy to account aggregation and widening access through the Accredited Investor Framework, he explains how Ionic balances IQ (domain expertise), EQ (relationship warmth), and DQ (digital capability)—a combination that has helped the firm cross $1 billion in AUM in less than two years while staying relevant in India’s next phase of wealth management. . Edited Excerpts –

Kshitij Anand: Well, let us just start with how the HNI population is expanding rapidly at this point in time. What are the structural changes that you are seeing in the industry? And there is another point I would like to add here. I am sure you have also noticed that a lot of people under 40 have actually come into this bracket. So, over to you on that.

Srikanth Subramanian: India is having its own ‘Silicon Valley moment’, with entrepreneurship and innovation leading the way. As many new-age companies that went public over the past five to ten years start unlocking value, we are seeing a wave of first-time investors entering the market.
It is not just the founders, but many others involved in this journey who are accumulating wealth at a very young age. Many are below 30 and have never had significant wealth that has been formally managed. However, they understand how technology can drive convenience.

So, A) that cohort is getting added.
B) Systematically in India, we have seen the financialization of investments, with money moving over the past five to six years from “real assets” towards financial markets. We are seeing that through rising mutual fund folios and Demat accounts.C) The advent of the next generation into either the business or family offices is also pushing newer trends. With a median age of 28–29, the investor voice in India today is very young compared to a decade ago.

Hence, we are seeing a widening of the investor base in India.

Indian investors today are far more comfortable using technology, both to access information and to execute transactions. In stockbroking, the evidence is clear: compared to a decade ago, nearly 65–70% of market share now sits with fintech platforms.

The real driver has been convenience. Technology offers seamless access and anytime availability. Over time, as this experience becomes embedded, even the definition of trust begins to evolve. Earlier, trust meant promoter-led firms, group companies, its conduct, and governance. While all of those still matter today, trust has also shifted towards how robust the technology is. If I press a button, does the transaction go through? does the redemption reach me?

Investors today are not afraid of using technology to make themselves wiser, minimise information arbitrage, access newer products, and execute commoditised transactions through technology.

Additionally, a new generation of investors are emerging, including those returning after studying overseas aspirations are evolving. They are no longer content with conventional offerings. If ultra-high-net-worth individuals can access REITs, InvITs, global markets, bonds, private equity, and venture capital, they too seek meaningful exposure to a wider, more sophisticated investment universe, structured in a way that suits them.

So, the demand for technology and width of products are two very interesting changes we are seeing. And on the HNI side, two to three customer cohorts are widening the market base at a very steady pace.

Kshitij Anand: But to a certain extent, is the traditional model of managing relationships with the help of relationship managers still sustainable at this point in time? What are your views on that?
Srikanth Subramanian: I believe there is space for everyone. The classic RM-led models have cost-to-serve economic challenges, but strong incumbents can sustain them because they already have annuity incomes that exceed their operational expenditure.

For newer challengers trying to build a traditional wealth management firm, the breakeven get extended because they do not have the luxury of recurring or annuity revenue to cover them.

During black swan events such as the 2008 Global Financial Crisis or COVID, a firm’s staying power gets tested. So, firms need to see what works for them.

In my view, we will all be bucketed into three different categories.

First, there will be those who speak about artificial intelligence, with or without a clear strategy, simply because it is fashionable to do so.

Second, there will be deniers who refuse change as is the classic case whenever a new technology comes in.

Third, there will be pragmatists who integrate technology with experience.

I am sure people across the buckets will have their own strategies. However, we align with the third bucket.
In a high-EQ business like wealth management, there is still significant weightage given to validation through experienced human touch.

Our omnichannel approach gives the investor the choice — what to do via technology and what to manage through human interaction. Our stack is built in a way that our RMs as well as our technology — as regulations allow — are fully equipped to deliver the end-to-end journey.

We see some investors use 80% of their wealth management journey through tech and engage an experienced RM only for strategic discussions, while others may prefer the reverse.

This is our hypothesis for building going forward.

Kshitij Anand: Absolutely, good that you pointed out the omnichannel approach. So, how does the omnichannel approach go beyond the RM model, according to you?
Srikanth Subramanian: Since some of us have been in this industry for almost two decades, we believe that an RM-led model has been very successful. The challenge, in many cases, has been the cost structure associated with RMs and related non-RM functions — where we have seen cost overlays.

We believe that the biggest comfort between the investor and the world of capital markets is the RM. So, we have decided not to disrupt that unless the investor chooses a non-RM approach.

However, we have found a significant opportunity to reduce costs behind the scenes, thereby increasing RM productivity and efficiency.

I will give you three examples.

First, we have almost 100 RMs and only nine or ten service managers That is roughly a 1:9 or 1:10 ratio of service managers to RMs, and we do not face service issues. The reason is that most service and operational tasks are automated through an in-house tech stack.

Second, most wealth management firms struggle to compile 100% MIS for an investor because of dependency on external counterparties such as PMS and AIFs and delays in receiving data. Today, through the Account Aggregator and MF Central framework, with client consent, we can access a comprehensive real-time and historical view of a customer’s portfolio. To this, we can layer analytics to offer personalised recommendations.

Third, through our innovation lab, we are training AI clones of our relationship, product, and service teams. One trained product bot can thus effectively service queries from 100 RMs simultaneously, even while handling other tasks.

Similarly, if investors are comfortable with only RM-trained clone, then we could potentially have the same high-quality RM present in 10 different meetings simultaneously.

Some of these initiatives have already gone live; others are still experimental. We will continue introducing them gradually, aligned with investor demand.

Kshitij Anand: And another thing that usually comes to the surface is about the experience. Just like when we go to a five-star hotel, it is not always about the food, but about the experience — how well the food was served, what the taste was like, and so on and so forth. Now, with you being technology-heavy — and legacy platforms usually suffer from this because they are not able to give the right kind of experience — how is the experience being matched at Ionic Wealth?
Srikanth Subramanian: So, we follow a tech philosophy of build, buy, and operate. Our philosophy is that anything core to us — defined through clear prioritisation — should be controlled by us. Our biggest core is anything that touches our customers’ lives. So, wherever customer experience is directly impacted, we believe it should remain under our control.

In any tech stack, there will be BAU situations — issues, bugs, latency problems. We realise that if core areas are outsourced, we cannot wait two or three days for diagnosis and resolution. That is where the trust gap comes in.

To clarify, we will not build the entire tech stack ourselves. We are not a tech-first company; we are a tech-enabled company. But the parts that directly touch our customers’ lives — onboarding journeys, mutual fund transactions — are areas we will continue to build in-house.

The advantage is that with a 24×7 tech stack including monitoring capabilities, we can pre-empt a bug even before the customer notifies us. So, resolution in near real-time, without depending on vendors.

We also operate in a dynamic environment — regulations change, new products emerge, tax rules evolve. In a standard vendor model, priorities depend on the vendor. However, when these requirements are core to you, you can define what is high priority and act immediately.

So, we believe that core and security-related areas are best controlled in-house for faster diagnosis and resolution. However, for non-core areas that do not justify our bandwidth, we are happy to partner with experienced vendors rather than reinvent the wheel.

Kshitij Anand: In fact, it is good that you pointed this out. You mentioned earlier that you are a technology-enabled company and that about 20% of the company is largely technology-focused. You also said you have mini AI labs building your own systems. How did that come about, and how is that helping you build a better experience for investors?
Srikanth Subramanian: Around 20% of our workforce is part of the tech team, but 100% of our firm is tech-enabled. Everyone, from the product team to private banking to WealthTech — uses internally developed tech tools for various purposes, whether it is our in-house CRM tool or our advisory tool.

Because of how technology has evolved, we are able to operate with a relatively small but sharp, specialised tech team. The AI lab exists because we believe that as a business scale, you tend to get extremely busy with transactions, solving customer queries, and day-to-day execution.

We have two labs: an Investment Lab and an AI Innovation Lab. Each is a small team — perhaps two or three members — supervised by someone with experience. These are high-quality professionals whose primary job is to look three to six months ahead, while the rest of the organisation focuses on solving immediate problems.

Culturally, as firms grow, we could tend to get consumed by present-day challenges and take our eyes off the future. To prevent that, our leadership team and I meet once a fortnight. Half the meeting is spent reviewing current operations — a sort of rear-view mirror exercise – and the other half involves members from our labs to discuss forward-looking ideas.

This ensures that, culturally, we always keep one leg in the future. We strive to continuously innovate, pre-empt changes, and stay ahead.

Kshitij Anand: And that is very important in today’s time and world — that we look at what is going to come next and prepare ourselves rather than react to it when it actually hits us. But yes, let me add one more thing to the conversation. Owning the tech stack is very important, but how does it help build the entire system and enable integration across everything?
Srikanth Subramanian: The more important part is that, as I gave some examples — whether it is the MF Central or the Account Aggregator example — using technology in multiple layers makes a difference. Since we own the tech stack, whether it is diagnosis, recovery, and cure time, or using the data layer on top of our database, we have greater control.

For example, while we use publicly available language models —Gemini and Claude, the algorithms on top of those AI language models are our own and have integrated them with our database.

Investors must try the Ionic AI agent on the beta version of our app. It does not give you a generic open-source answer but a specific answer because we have visibility of your portfolio. Of course, we are very conscious of the – DPI and the consent aspects.

Trained on both LLMs and SLMs and connected to our database and built on our proprietary algorithms, our model can offer assistance similar to an RM who has known you for a decade.

Also, AI is iterative. The more we use it, the better it gets. While we do not claim 100% accuracy yet, we are happy with the results and use it daily to embed intelligence into the system.

Looking ahead, I see a future where intelligent conversations happen effortlessly, at the airport, before a movie, or over the weekend. Today, most professionals carve out time only on weekends, while weekdays leave little room for thoughtful financial conversations. Investors will have the power to choose when to interact with their AI agent — trained on their own data — at their preferred time and place.

Kshitij Anand: Let me add one more point. How are you leveraging India’s account aggregation framework to enhance portfolio analysis?
Srikanth Subramanian: Interestingly we worked closely with Sahamati, which acts as an industry facilitator. We realised that MF Central was a great tool to aggregate and consolidate mutual fund folios in one place. But if we could also achieve similar consolidation for Demat holdings, it would significantly enhance the investor experience.

Most financial products are dematerialised, and soon AIFs are expected to move in that direction. Stocks are already dematerialised, PMS structures are proxies to stocks, and we have REITs, InvITs, private equity, and more. So, anywhere between 75% and 90% of a portfolio could be in dematerialised form.

Through the Account Aggregator framework — which connects to depositories — we can provide consolidated data for Demat holdings along with mutual funds.

Initially, the framework provided only two years of historical data — a span we found far too narrow. In financial services, limited data can distort perspective. If an investor has a decade-long track record but can view only two years, the context is compromised. Meaningful decisions require complete visibility.

We worked closely with administrators and ecosystem participants to expand the window from two years to twenty years of historical data. We believe we are among the few, if not the only ones to offer up to two decades of history through the Account Aggregator framework.

Once data is consolidated, the next step is how you use it — and that is where data science comes in. With customer consent, we analyse their historical behavior: how they responded during bull markets or downturns.

This allows us to guide our customers better and make the advisory process more contextual and behavioral in nature, especially during market volatility.

Kshitij Anand: Those are wonderful insights. On a lighter note, I would say we often saw examples on TV where someone discovered that their father owned X, Y, or Z shares decades ago, and suddenly it turned out to be a goldmine.
Srikanth Subramanian: In fact, we have real use cases — even within my own family — where through MF Central and the Account Aggregator framework, people discovered forgotten folios or stocks.

Some of these initiatives, beyond helping firms such as ours build businesses, are genuinely in the public interest. Consolidation and visibility are perhaps the simplest forms of value creation for investors. I hope such public-good services remain active and accessible.

Of course, we still believe there are efficiencies that can be improved within the account aggregation journey. We are working with the relevant ecosystem participants to enhance that further.

Kshitij Anand: Ionic Wealth is now managing more than $1 Billion of AUM. What is driving this momentum? I am sure you have already listed quite a few factors — why it is important and what is driving it — but over to you on that.
Srikanth Subramanian: I think we come from an experienced ecosystem. We were very fortunate that most of our private bankers and clients continued to place their trust in us. But we are also very conscious — we do not take that trust lightly. We take it as a privilege, not as a right.

From day one, we ensured that we created a very robust platform. There is not a single asset class that we do not cover. Within that, we have built centers of excellence — whether it is navigating international investing, private equity investing, or building a flagship equity product around the long India story.

The culmination of trus built over the years, strong parentage, and the creation of a robust platform with clear strengths in specified areas has ensured that we have been fortunate to scale. But as I said, this journey has just begun. We are not here for early victories. These early milestones give us the right to win, but in reality, we are probably only in the first 5% of our journey.

Kshitij Anand: If you had to summarise the structural changes that differentiate Ionic from a traditional private bank or wealth desk, what would they be?
Srikanth Subramanian: The biggest differentiator is omnichannel. Many wealth firms are still deciding their approach — some are tech-only, some are RM-only. But in the past six months, I have seen the conversation around omnichannel intensify. We were among the first to start talking about omnichannel, and I believe that has helped us.

Within the firm, we follow a three-pillar agenda: IQ, EQ, and DQ. We constantly strive to maintain a balance among the three.

IQ is the intelligence quotient — our domain capability. We were among the first wealth firms to launch our own GIFT City-based Global Innovation Fund. Moreover, while there is ample talent for micro, sectoral, and thematic investing in India, we saw a gap in macro investing. So, we brought in exceptional talent to build India’s long-only PIPE fund.

We also provided access to high-quality private equity transactions and built a strong multi-asset allocation platform. Some of our calls — such as going long on commodities, especially silver, and international diversification have delivered strong incremental returns. For investors with limited time, our flagship asset allocation product, Allocate, which was listed among the top 10 funds for two consecutive months, this year, acts as a proxy for asset allocation strategies.

Domain expertise is at the core of our IQ plank. Even before launching, we ensured that our platform was fully built — unlike other players who may prioritise building a team of relationship managers and sales before moving on to creating the platform.

DQ is the digital quotient, where technology is at the core of everything we do.

EQ, or Emotional Quotient, is equally important. We do not want to disrupt the biggest comfort for investors — the RMs. Client engagement focuses on knowledge, next-generation involvement, and relationship building.

So, whether it is EQ through relationship warmth, DQ through technology enablement, or IQ through domain expertise — these three cornerstones help build a balanced and long-term wealth management practice.

Kshitij Anand: You mentioned that one arm of the firm is always looking outward. How do the next five years look for the wealth management space?
Srikanth Subramanian: We are going through a very interesting phase. Sometimes I hear cynical views that the bubble will burst. I do not think so. We are a healthily growing country, and we require strong asset management, wealth management, stockbroking, and banking ecosystems to ensure financial inclusion and enable participation in the India growth story.

More competition and doing the right things are healthy. Everyone has a role to play — digital-only, RM-only, omnichannel models. Of course, if firms make strategic mistakes, overspend beyond their means, or over-leverage their balance sheets, those risks remain — just as they did twenty years ago. Common sense has not changed.

But India deserves more than just a handful of wealth management firms. We need high-quality firms with robust platforms, strong domain expertise, intelligent use of technology, cost discipline, and a philosophy of giving investors the power of choice while maintaining relationship warmth.

If you ask me, the best-case scenario for India is not one, two, three, or five firms — but perhaps 15 or 20 strong wealth management firms of different sizes and models. Some fragmented, some local, some large some tech-only — but all contributing to expanding the market.

Kshitij Anand: Can you take us through the Accredited Investor Framework?
Srikanth Subramanian: The Accredited Investor Framework is something we were very early adopters of. We believe that as Indian investors increase their net worth, many of them will qualify under what is called the Accredited Investor Framework.

Again, like technology, there is some level of hesitation in our own industry about what value it will add. But if you look at the broader tonality, the regulator believes that if an investor is accredited, they are capable of taking certain investment decisions without the need for very tight regulations.

So, the intent is to allow such investors to participate in investments like AIFs and PMS at lower thresholds. We are ensuring that this information reaches investors. We have already enabled many accredited investors in the industry, and we continue to work with accreditation agencies, industry bodies, and the regulator to streamline the process.

(Note: The journalist was invited to their office)

(Disclaimer: Recommendations, suggestions, views, and opinions given by experts are their own. These do not represent the views of the Economic Times)