We have heard about the name Alice, (Alice in Wonderland). Well!! It is the germanic word meaning “of noble rank” and the color blue indicates “the color of clear sky when the sun shines”.The main idea of naming this company “ALICE BLUE” is to provide trust and offer different services to the consumers in a noble way (without buffering them).
THE ORGANISATION
Alice Blue is a discount broker platform that was established in December 2006 in Chennai. They later moved the Head Office to Bengaluru. Today they have a PAN India presence with 20 branches across 16 cities. They manage over 4 lakh customers now. They offer a platform to trade equities, derivatives, commodities, currencies, mutual funds, and IPOs. Alice Blue has dreams to offer a one-stop solution for customers for all their investment needs. The name Alice Blue originates from the Greek word for truth while Blue is always the color of trust and dependability. So they seek to offer dependable brokerage services to the customers at the lowest industry rates.HEAD OF THE COMPANY
Mr. Sidhuvelayutham M, the CEO of the company. He has a Management of Finance degree from the Indian Finance Institute and a Master’s from IIM Bangalore. He has overall responsibility for operations and new product development. He has a background in analytics and strategic planning which he applies to the business while looking out for disruptive concepts and adapting new technologies ahead of the competition. He has an able team of seasoned professionals from the industry to support him.They have been with the company for over a decade and have helped to supercharge the growth, strategy, finance, and operations. They moved to a paperless mode in 2017 with online customer onboarding via Aadhaar and eKYC along with digital payments. This helped the company to scale up exponentially.THE CLIENTS
They have over 4 lakh customers from all over India who have opened their trading accounts with Alice Blue. They cater to the trading and investor community in India by offering them a discount brokerage platform for trading in equities, derivatives, currencies, commodities, IPOs, and Mutual Funds. They have several business partners who use the proprietary platform to run their trading businesses.ABOUT DOMAIN
The main motive of the company is to find the solution for the basic emanation of the merchant and shareholders in the Stock market in the locution of price transparency, customer support, and dependency. They wanted to offer them a smooth experience on a broking platform that offers low flat rates for trading and zero brokerage for equity purchases in cash. The idea was to make trading pleasing to individuals and develop an awareness of the equity cult among the younger generation.They firmly believe that the customer comes first. Staying true to the brand promise and making investing and trading simple and rewarding, They continue to find ways to delight their customers. Through their online platforms and mobile applications, they empower retail investors and high-volume traders to do it themselves. In addition, they offer courses and products in the trade school and trade store to support the traders for more efficient trading. However, at Alice Blue, they charge a flat fee of Rs 15 per trade. They provide free APIs to clients for order placements in milliseconds, live OI data, and reliable web sockets which have helped them improve their reach.They focus on continuous improvement in technology so that they can provide a glitch-free trading platform to their clients. As far as customer issue resolution is concerned, their turnaround time is around 30 mins to an hour at most. They offer a paperless account opening process that is swift, simple, and hassle-free.FUTURE GOAL
They wish to be India’s preferred discount broker. Their aim is to have over 1 million derivative trading accounts by 2025. They wish to reduce transaction costs further while continuing to provide the best trading platform.They wish to build an interconnected universe of products and services, learning materials, trading strategies, and suggestions under one roof. They aim to reduce ticket response time to minutes from the current 1 hour during working time. The response window opens around the clock.CHALLENGES FACED DURING LOCKDOWN
Since Alice Blue is an online trading platform, they didn’t face too much of a challenge during the pandemic. They managed to have employees working from home. In fact during the lockdown, With more people stuck at home, they opened more trading accounts than usual. This was a by-product of the lockdown which forced people to work from home. The equity cult has grown in India during the pandemic and youngsters are taking a keen interest.IMMERSIVE TECHNOLOGY
As they say, data is the new oil or gold. New immersive technologies are helping to create better customer experiences. The more information they gather about customer behavior and preferences using the CSAT survey helps them to fine-tune their offerings to design tailored solutions for their customers based on the most used services and products. They keep upgrading our versions so that customers get the maximum benefit.BIGGEST OBSTACLES
The customer of today is very aware as the world has become digital and interconnected, In such an environment, customers are spoilt for choice. If you don’t provide them with what they are looking for, they will just move on to someone who does. Since there is no logistical constraint anymore, brands and businesses have to be aware of changing customer needs and preferences and keep tailoring their offerings accordingly. Collecting customer data and Analyzing it regularly is the biggest challenge but you can turn the problem on its head and say it is the solution as well.DIGITAL CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE JOURNEY
The CEO stated that “We have focused on building our brand image through social media campaigns, word-of-mouth referrals, client referrals, partner referrals, Public Relations, Influencer marketing, and other brand-building activities.
Dealing with aware customers who are conscious of what they are paying for needs to be done with care. Today’s customers have access to a lot of information in the public domain and you cannot get away if you provide a shoddy experience. It is therefore extremely important for brands to maintain their image by providing a complaint-free experience to customers. Earning the loyalty of customers and retaining them is a challenge that every brand needs to rise to. That is the only way to thrive in this digital world”.
