Do you invest a part of your income into PPF, bank fixed deposits, or gold? I am pretty sure most of you must have invested in at least one of these traditional investment options, right? But what about some of the ‘not so common’ options, such as investment into bonds, SDIs, treasury bills? Perhaps not many of you might have invested in these investment options. A similar thought came across the minds of Jiraaf’s founders a few years ago, who then founded a platform to offer investors the access to various fixed income securities and alternative investments.
“What triggered the birth of Jiraaf in the country’s growing fintech space was an untapped opportunity to cause disruption. We realised that there were no new investment opportunities in the market, especially on the debt side,” Jiraaf’s founders Saurav Ghosh and Vineet Agrawal had once mentioned. That is what fueled the duo’s dreams to develop a platform that can democratise access to new-age investments and is flushed with high-quality fixed-income opportunities that go beyond the aforementioned investment options, thus helping Indians diversify their portfolio in a better way.
Today we will do a deep dive into the journey of Jiraaf, an online bond platform offering high-yield, fixed-income investments. It is a SEBI-Regulated OBPP platform since December 2023.
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This is not a sponsored post in any form whatsoever. Our company profiles are completely independent opinions of what we think about the platform. It should not be construed as investment advice or any attempt to malign the name of the company.
Corporate Structure & Founders of Jiraaf
Jiraaf as a brand comes under which Jiraaf Platform Private Limited offers its retail broking and investment services. Jiraaf is owned by AI Growth Private Limited, which has built and designed the platform of Jiraaf, and also manages it. Jiraaf was founded in 2021 by Saurav Ghosh and Vineet Agrawal.
As per the latest MCA filings, Jiraaf has these four directors at the company:
While Saurav Ghosh and Vineet Agrawal are Jiraaf’s co-founders, the other directors at the platform, i.e Sheetal Jain and Azar Abdul Pathan, are employees at Jiraaf.
Vineet Agrawal’s LinkedIn Profile Link-https://www.linkedin.com/in/vineet-agrawal-8aa5359/
Saurav Ghosh’s Linkedin Profile Link-https://www.linkedin.com/in/saurav-ghosh-5345905/
Both Saurav and Vineet have over a decade of experience in corporate finance and real estate, respectively. While Vineet has SBI, Axis Bank and Piramal Fund Management among its previous employers, Saurav has worked with the likes of Standard Chartered Bank and Ozone Group.
Business Model of Jiraaf
Just like most SEBI-registered OBPPs in India, the business model of Jiraaf revolves around being a distributor of bonds and earning a spread i.e. they buy at a lower price and sell at a higher price. It has mentioned on its platform as well, that it does not charge any fee but earns from listing each investment opportunity.
Jiraaf offers the following investment options to its investors:
T-Bills (Treasury Bills)
Listed Corporate Bonds
Sovereign Gold Bonds (SGB)
G-Secs (Government Securities) & SDLs (State Development Loans)
SDIs (Securitized Debt Instruments) (Read more about SDIs here)
Jiraaf’s AMO (After Market Order) Feature
Another key offering by Jiraaf, is the AMO (After Market Order). With the AMO feature, investors can place an order at their convenience on the platform, any time, and on any day, irrespective of it being a weekend or a public holiday. To be frank, almost all OBPPs now offer this feature.
Can Defaults Happen?
Debt instruments in nature are less riskier than equity investments, but it highly depends on which kind of bond you have purchased. Now with so many options available in the market such as NCD, MLD, Unlisted Corporate, Govt Bond, it can get very confusing on which option works best for you. But one thing which is always very helpful to know is the rating of the bond.
Things We Like About Jiraaf
Diverse investment opportunities: Jiraaf not just offers a wide variety of bonds on its platform, but also T-bills, SDLs, etc. This helps investors having varying investment goals and risk appetite, to invest across diverse options through the platform.
SEBI-regulated platform: Jiraaf is a SEBI regulated OBPP platform. So, the chances of fraud or mis-selling are low.
Good user interface: Jiraaf has a good UI to display all the relevant information to investors in a single screen, without seeming to be text heavy. It’s fair to say that this has been a tough nut to crack for some other OBPPs.
Things We Don’t Like About Jiraaf
- AI Growth Pvt Ltd, which owns Jiraaf, also owns AltGraaf, an alternative investment platform that deals in offering such as invoice discounting and asset leasing, but in the form of unregulated securities. AltGraaf is not registered with SEBI, while Jiraaf deals in regulated securities, and is also registered with SEBI. This can create a confusion amongst public. Infact this is a widely caused confusion amongst our community members.
Conclusion
Overall, it can be said that SEBI-registered platform Jiraaf is becoming one of the key players in the OBPP space in India, by offering a diverse range of fixed-income investment opportunities that go beyond the traditional options. Jiraaf also provides a secure environment for investors to explore high-yield bonds and alternative investments. The platform's user-friendly interface and innovative features like the AMO (After Market Order) enhance the investment experience. However, potential investors should be aware of the dual roles of some directors and the unregulated nature of AI Growth-owned other platform AltGraaf. Overall, Jiraaf seems to be a promising avenue for investors looking to diversify their portfolios with fixed-income securities. And with the Indian bond market gaining more popularity not just domestically but globally as well, the potential for OBPP platforms like Jiraaf to grow, is immense!
ALT Investor is very bullish about diversification, and feels that Indians need to break the traditional norm of investing only in FDs or PPF. They must diversify, if their risk appetite allows them to, and find investment options that fill the wide gap between FDs and equities, and offer a middle-ground in terms of both risk and returns. Platforms like Jiraaf are offering such an opportunity by making retail investors more familiar with India’s bond market, which in itself is showing signs of a bright future and huge potential.
Please note that this is an opinion blog and not an official research or investment advice. This blog aims to help retail investors make an informed decision in the bond market, and neither encourages nor discourages you from investing in any particular bond or any other asset class.
We plan to come up with more blogs discussing different types of instruments available in the world of startup investing, write on due diligence for some platforms, and also existing and upcoming alt investment deals in the Indian market. If you want to stay updated on the latest blogs, please subscribe to our newsletter so you get notified automatically.
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