Karvy Private Wealth, the wealth management arm of the Karvy Group, has acquired the wealth management business of iTrust Financial Advisors, a financial service firms, with operations in Delhi/NCR, Bangalore and Hyderabad, for an undisclosed sum.
Karvy has acquired the entire business and assets of iTrust. With this acquisition, Karvy will grow its wealth management and financial planning business. This will also enable the company to enter tax preparation and filing service thereby becoming one of the largest non banking wealth management businesses. iTrust has about 160 employees till now. The company claims to be one of the largest paid-for financial planning companies and is also one of the largest branded tax preparation and filing businesses for salaried employees in the country.
iTrust was founded in 2006 by Dhruv Agarwala and Kartik Varma, classmates from Harvard Business School. Agarwala was the CEO of GE's Infrastructure business in India and also led institutional sales for GE in the country. Varma invested money for the Ziff family and thereafter for Europe's leading hedge fund, TCI Fund Management, in his previous stints.
The company has a specialist team of over 150 members across Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore and Chennai comprising MBAs, chartered accountants, chartered financial planners and lawyers.
In 2007, the company raised money from marquee angel investors like Ashish Dhawan of ChrysCapital and professors of Harvard Business School.
The space has seen some action of late. Recently, personal finance startup, Rupee Talk was acquired by NetAmbit, a financial services distribution company. In 2008, the private treaties division of Bennett Coleman & Company Ltd (BCCL), which owns the Times of India newspaper, picked up a stake in First Altus Resources and Networks Private Ltd, the owners of Taxshax.com, an online income tax return filing company.
To know more about the founders and how they built the company, read an interesting feature here.
