This past fall, Karvy Inc., one of India's largest brokerage firms, opened their first office in Manhattan...a minuscule two-person office near the South Street Seaport. Karvy's long-term desire is to duplicate their success at home, where they work with 18 million clients. In fact, they have aspirations of competing one day with the likes of Charles "Talk to Chuck" Schwab, in fighting for the wallets of individual investors.
Karvy's interest in the U.S may have a slight linkage to the fact that India has one of the world's hottest stock markets. The benchmark Sensex Index has nearly tripled over the past three years...drawing significant capital inflows.
Indian-Americans are an attractive, and growing, market for financial services. Recently, National Underwriter has had a number of articles that point to the allure of this ethnic segment.
Consider these points:
- The population of Asian-Indians living in the United States was reported in the 2000 Census as 1.7 million...doubling over the past 10 years.
- 38% of Indian-Americans over the age of 25 held graduate or professional degrees, compared to 8.9% of all U.S. residents in that age group.
- 15% of Indian immigrants had annual household incomes over $150,000, compared to 5.6% for all U.S. households.
- Asian-Indian immigrants were about three times as likely as other U.S. residents to own a business with employees, and about 30 times as likely to own hotels or other lodging places.
As you might imagine, these numbers are beginning to cause U.S. financial service companies to sit up and pay attention. In the past, Asian Indians have not been targeted as a niche market. In part, this was due to the assumption that mainstream marketing strategies were effective in reaching this group...given their fluency in English. However, in recent surveys, 45% of Asian-Indians have indicated that the spoken language in their home is most likely their native one.
I'll pick up this topic again tomorrow.
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