Sharan Hegde has built on his popularity as a content creator and his expertise to grow a diversified business that offers a range of products and financial solutions
A finfluencer and entrepreneur Sharan Hegde
One can assume that Sharan Hegde, a finfluencer-turned entrepreneur, has a certain amount of cockiness, creating a financial education firm—The 1% Club, with annual revenues of ₹61 crore and backed by investors—at 29. Hegde sits casually, dressed in black jeans, long-sleeve beige T-shirt, accessorised by a cuboid men’s locket.
Outside his room, The 1% Club, located in a Mumbai suburb, is a startup-styled company, of which he is founder and CEO.
As he speaks, you can see a young-but-fast maturing personality—among the most followed financial influencers (finfluencers) in India, who is mastering the art of social media. In a few years, Hegde has built up an impressive scale: Finance with Sharan has 3,23,000 followers on YouTube, 2.7 million followers on Instagram (as of September 26) and The 1% Club has over 60,000 lifetime members, and also includes another platform, ‘The Personal CFO’—an investment advisory registered with Sebi (Securities and Exchange Board of India)—where people who are too busy with their jobs get access to experts to help them achieve their financial and tax goals.
But the space which Hegde and other finfluencers operate in is highly visible and under scrutiny. Their presence has increased as a new set of thousands of investors entered Indian equities, without clarity on their investment goals and a wafer-thin ability to take risks. The Nifty 50 index has seen a 222 percent rise from the pandemic lockdown low in March 2020, resulting in a sharp rise in mutual fund investments, hedge funds and digital-focussed brokerage firms.
(This story appears in the 18 October, 2024 issue of Forbes India. To visit our Archives, click here.)