Kaiyomurz Daver
I build brands for a product you cannot see, touch, or try before you buy. I have been doing it since 2004.
Chief Marketing Officer, Nippon India Mutual Fund
Since 2004 · Five financial-services organisations · AMFI industry committee member · Platforms still running years later
The Argument
In most categories you can show someone the thing. Hand it over, let them hold it, let them try it and decide for themselves. In mine there is nothing to hand over. There is a promise, a piece of paper, and the question of whether anyone believes you.
That is the hardest brand problem I know of, and it has been my problem since 2004. Financial services teaches you something I do not think you learn as quickly anywhere else. Trust is the only asset that compounds, and it is built slowly, in public, by teams who are given the room to do their best work.
I have run marketing through a complete rebrand, a change of ownership, a pandemic, and a category that went from under a crore of investors to more than six crore in seven years. The numbers further down this page are the outcome. The number I am actually proud of is how many people who worked for me at Kotak stayed the full thirteen years.
The ability to balance authority with humility. That is the whole thing.
Selected Impact
The detail is further down the page. Here is the shape of it first.
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Investor base · Nippon India Mutual Fund, 2024 to present1.3 Cr to 2.3 Cr
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Market share · Nippon India Mutual Fund, 2024 to present7% to 8.8%
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Assets under management · Kotak Mahindra AMC, 2005 to 2018Rs. 7,500 Cr to Rs. 1.2 Lakh Cr
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Top of mind awareness · IDFC to Bandhan, 2020 to 20248% to 37%
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Industry investor base · AMFI, over eight years on the committee~80 L to 6+ Cr
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Building brands in financial servicesSince 2004
The Work
A fund house with no bank behind it, growing faster than the ones that have one.
Nippon sits in the top four without the thing most of its competitors quietly lean on. Every other brand near the top of this category borrows trust from a large parent bank. We had to build ours from the name up.
In two years the investor base went from 1.3 crore to 2.3 crore. Market share moved from 7 percent to 8.8 percent. Retail investor share went from a quarter of the base to nearly 38 percent. The fintech channel now carries 66 percent of the business, which is not where this industry was five years ago, and across calendar 2024 and 2025 we grew assets faster than anyone else in the top five.
The part I enjoyed most was not on that list. It was doing three things nobody in Indian mutual funds had done before.
India's first sonic brand identity for a mutual fund
InvestBae, the first Gen Z investment content platform in the category
First implementation of Adobe Experience Manager in Indian mutual funds
Retiring a name the market knew, and installing one it had never heard of.
IDFC was a known quantity. Bandhan was not, at least not in mutual funds. Changing the name on a financial product is not a design exercise. You are asking people who have handed you their savings to accept that the thing they trusted is now called something else, and to keep their money where it is while you explain why.
Top of mind awareness went from 8 percent to 37 percent. Consideration moved from 16 percent to 38 percent. Digital direct business went from 4.8 percent to 8 percent. Somewhere in the middle of all that, the investor awareness campaign we had built, PaisonKoRoKoMat, won a Blue Elephant at Kyoorius.
It was the most complete piece of brand work I have been handed, and the least forgiving. There is no second launch date for a rebrand.
PaisonKoRoKoMat, Blue Elephant, Kyoorius Awards 2021
Thirteen years, and the properties are still running.
I joined when the business managed 7,500 crore and sat eighth in the industry. I left thirteen years later with 1.2 lakh crore under management and the business ranked fourth.
Thirteen years in one job is unfashionable. I would do it again. It is the only length of time in which you can build something, watch it not work, fix it, and then watch it become the thing everyone else copies.
SIP Day opened with thirty thousand systematic investment plans in its first edition and eighty five thousand in the second, and won Outlook Money the award for the most innovative approach to investor awareness. You and I, the distributor loyalty platform, was conceptualised in 2008. The CFO Colloquium is in its seventh year.
Most of the team that built those things stayed the whole thirteen years with me. That is the number I would put on a wall.
SIP Day
You and I
CFO Colloquium
Three organisations that taught me the trade.
I started in 1998 in the managing director office at DBS Corporate Services, which is a strange privilege for a first job. You watch how decisions actually get made at the top long before you are qualified to have an opinion about them. At Business Standard I looked after brand across three publications and made friendships with journalists who now run newsrooms. At Motilal Oswal Securities I made the first television commercial an Indian broking house had ever run, and built the Wealth Creation Awards with CNBC into a property the category still recognises.
Built to Last
There is a test I apply to my own work and it is not a generous one. Five years after you leave, is any of it still there?
Most marketing does not survive the person who made it. Campaigns end, agencies change, and the next person in the chair wants their own thing on the wall. What survives is the small number of platforms that people outside the company came to depend on.
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2008 → still running
You and I
Conceptualised as a distributor loyalty platform in 2008. It is 2026 and distributors are still part of it.
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Year one → 7th edition
CFO Colloquium
In its seventh year, and has since grown a second edition.
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30,000 SIPs → still referenced
SIP Day
Still referenced across the industry as a template for getting people to start investing.
I did not build any of them alone and I have not worked at Kotak since 2018. They are still running. That is the only kind of proof I fully trust.
How I Lead
My team has a name for me that I did not choose and have never corrected. Chief Happiness Officer.
When somebody brings me a decision they are perfectly capable of making themselves, I fire them. Which is to say I send them away to go and make it. It is said with affection and it works. People who are trusted with authority tend to grow into it. People who are managed closely tend to stay exactly the size you managed them at.
I do not sit in review meetings that exist so information can be shared. Share the information. Use the meeting for the argument.
Job is okay. There is more to life than just a job. I say that to my team often, usually to the people who most need to hear it and will not hear it from anyone else.
Industry, Speaking and Media
For more than eight years I have served on the industry committee at AMFI, working on investor awareness at a category level rather than a company one.
It is the least commercial work I do and probably the most useful. Over that period the industry went from around eighty lakh investors to more than six crore. I would not claim credit for that. I would say I was in the room while a country learned to invest, and that being in that room changes what you think marketing is for.
It also cured me of the idea that a brand can be built at the expense of the category it sits in.
Topics I speak on
- Trust as a brand asset, in categories customers can't test before they buy
- Building brands on long horizons, not campaign cycles
- Leadership that balances authority with humility
Short bio
A condensed, downloadable version of this page for event organisers and press.
Download short bio (PDF)Recognition
Contact
If you want to talk about brand, argue about measurement, or have me speak somewhere, this is the way to reach me.
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