Geojit plans to double customer base to 2 mn in 5 years

The sixth largest retail brokerage Geojit Financial Services today set a target of doubling its customer base to 2 million from over 9 lakh now over the next five years and will also hire 1,000 more market professionals to service them.
The Kochi-based brokerage, which was till recently known as Geojit PNB Paribas Financial Services, also unveiled a new logo and shortened the name to Geojit Financial Services after the French financial services major withdrew its board members from the 30-year-old brokerage last November after the FIPB approved its takeover of Sharekhan brokerage.
PNB Paribas had picked up a little over 34.41 per cent stake in the CJ George-founded company in late 2006 for Rs 207 crore.

"We plan to increase our customer base to 2 million over the next five years from 9 lakh now. We will also hire around 1,000 market professionals or relationship managers with that.
"Our optimism and market outreach plans arise from the massive increase in SIP (systematic investment plans) investors, who now stand at over 1.75 lakh. All these customers came in the past 8-9 months alone," Geojit founder and managing director C J George said.
"The renaming as Geojit Financial Services is in line with the restated shareholder agreement between Geojit and BNP Paribas. The French multinational bank will continue to be a prominent shareholder along with Kerala State Industrial Development Corporation and Rakesh Jhunjhunwala," George said.

Explaining the rationale behind the name change, he said, "BNP Paribas has been and is still a valuable partner for us. After their deal with Sharekhan worked out, they pulled out their representatives from our board to avoid any conflict of interest and decided to be a financial investor with us."

But to a specific question from PTI, he said there is no plan to buy the French investors' stake in the company as he wants them to be a valuable partner.
"Absolutely, there is no plan to buy them out, both of us are happy with the present arrangement," he said.

In early January this year, BNP had said the
acquisition of Sharekhan does not affect BNP Paribas' commitment towards Geojit.
Affirming that they have no plans to exit its investments in Geojit, BNP Paribas India chief executive and country head Joris Dierckx had told