Advisory

Investment advice the way an institution would run it — for a household.

Fee-only. Allocation before selection. A written reason for every holding. Below is exactly how we think about each place your money can go, what we would hold, when, how much, and why — so that you can judge us before you hire us.

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Two engagements

Securities advisory, or the whole balance sheet.

Both are fee-only and both begin with your personal financial statement. Choose the scope that matches the assets you actually have.

	Securities advisory	Complete financial advisory personal financial doctor
Scope	Listed equity, mutual funds and ETFs, bonds and debt funds, gold ETF / SGB, REITs and InvITs.	Everything in securities advisory, plus real estate (residential, commercial, PG / co-living, farmhouse, agricultural land), crypto assets, physical and futures commodities, IPOs, and research on your own business idea.
What you receive	Written asset allocation with rebalancing bands · model portfolio with named instruments · buy/sell rationale per holding · SIP and goal design · tax-aware harvesting notes.	All of that, plus a household balance-sheet plan: property decisions with the four numbers written down, loan strategy, insurance gaps, an allocation for ventures, tax planning through the CA desk, and estate basics (nominations, will, joint holdings).
Cadence	Onboarding plan, then quarterly reviews on the tracker: XIRR vs NIFTYBEES on your exact cash flows.	Annual plan, quarterly check-ups, and a decision memo whenever a large choice comes up — the flat, the land, the IPO, the idea.
Best for	Salaried professionals, first-time investors, NRIs with Indian portfolios, anyone whose wealth is mostly in demat and fund accounts.	Families with property, business owners, households with more than one kind of asset, anyone facing a large one-off decision.
How we are paid	A flat annual fee agreed in writing before we start — never a commission, never a share of assets, never a referral payment from a builder, fund house or exchange. Fees are announced when advisory opens.
Regulatory status	Securities advice is offered under SEBI Investment Adviser registration once it is granted (application under process). Guidance on real estate, crypto assets and physical commodities is financial-planning and research support and not a securities recommendation. Until registration, the free financial statement review is educational.

The allocation framework

Five buckets, sized so that no single mistake can sink the household.

Every plan we write places money in these buckets before it names a single instrument. The percentages are of investable assets, excluding the home you live in.

Reserve · 6–12 months of expenses — liquid funds. Not for return; for keeping every other plan intact.
Core · 50–65% — index equity, quality large-caps, government and target-maturity debt.
Income · 10–20% — REITs, InvITs, leased commercial property, dividend growers.
Real assets · 10–25% — gold and silver, investment property, agricultural land.
Ventures · 0–5% — crypto, SME IPOs, pre-IPO paper, your own idea.

An illustrative household, age 35, dual income

Investable assets excluding the home. Illustration, not a recommendation.

Bucket	Instruments	Share
Reserve	Liquid fund (6 months' expenses, held outside the percentages)	—
Core	Nifty 50 index fund 35% · quality large-caps 10% · target-maturity debt 15%	60%
Income	Office REITs 8% · InvIT 4%	12%
Real assets	Sovereign Gold Bonds / gold ETF 8% · silver ETF 2% · land 10%	20%
Ventures	Bitcoin 3% · one mainboard IPO position 2% · idea research budget 3%	8%

Core · SEBI-regulated advisory scope

Listed securities

The compounding core of every household portfolio: cheap to hold, liquid on any working day, transparent, and taxed sensibly at long horizons. We build it from the index outward and measure everything against it.

Broad-market index fund (Nifty 50 / Nifty 500)

When to hold: Always — from the first rupee, and as the anchor of every equity allocation. Add via SIP; never time the entry.
Why: Over rolling 10-year periods most actively managed funds trail the index after fees. An index fund gives you the country's earnings growth at 0.1–0.2% a year, with no manager risk.
How much: 35–50% of investable assets for a working household; toward the upper end if you are under 35 and have an emergency reserve.
Role over ten years: The engine. Everything else — every stock, every property, every "idea" — is judged by whether it beat this, which is exactly what the tracker measures.

Quality large-cap dividend growers (direct equity, 8–15 names)

When to hold: When you have a 7-year-plus horizon, can sit through a 30% drawdown without selling, and want income that grows faster than inflation.
Why: Companies with ROE above 15%, little debt and a rising dividend compound with shallower drawdowns; verified dividends become a second income line you can audit against your bank statement.
How much: 10–20% of investable assets; never more than 5% in one name, never more than 25% in one sector.
Role over ten years: Stability and income inside the equity book — the part of the portfolio that pays you to wait, and the part that funds rebalancing in a crash.

Mid- and small-cap fund (satellite)

When to hold: Only with a 10-year horizon, only via SIP, and only after the reserve and the index core are in place.
Why: Higher earnings growth, but 50–60% drawdowns are normal, not exceptional. A SIP turns that volatility into an advantage; a lump sum turns it into regret.
How much: 10–15% at most. When it grows past 20% of equity, trim back — that discipline is where the extra return actually comes from.
Role over ten years: The growth kicker and the reason to rebalance. It should feel slightly uncomfortable; if it feels exciting, it is too big.

Government bonds and target-maturity debt funds

When to hold: For any goal inside 3–5 years, and as ballast whenever equity exceeds 70% of the portfolio.
Why: Sovereign-backed, predictable, and tax-efficient through target-maturity funds held to maturity. Debt is what stops a job loss or a bear market from becoming a forced sale of equity at the bottom.
How much: Start from "100 minus age" as the equity share and adjust for temperament — typically 20–35% in debt for a household in its 30s and 40s.
Role over ten years: The shock absorber. In 2008 and 2020 the households that stayed invested were the ones with a debt bucket to draw from.

Liquid / overnight funds (the emergency reserve)

When to hold: Before any investing at all. Six months of expenses; twelve for a single-income household or a business owner.
Why: Instant liquidity at near-savings-rate risk. Not for return — for keeping every other plan intact when life interrupts.
How much: 6–12 months of household expenses, rebuilt first whenever it is used.
Role over ten years: The foundation nobody notices until it is missing. It is the reason the rest of the portfolio can afford to be long-term.

House rule. What we will not do here: recommend a fund for a commission, trade on tips, use leverage, or promise a return. Direct stock positions come with a written one-page rationale and a stated reason to sell.

Real assets · illiquid, lumpy, emotionally loaded

Real estate

Where most Indian household wealth already sits — and where the least arithmetic gets done. We treat property as an asset with a yield, a cost of carry, a tax bill and an exit, not as a trophy. Leverage is the multiplier in both directions.

Residential — self-occupied or rental

When to hold: Self-use: when you will stay 8+ years and the EMI is under 35% of take-home pay. Rental: only when gross yield is at least 3.5% and you can hold ten years without needing the money.
Why: A home you live in replaces rent and forces saving; that is its real return. Investment flats in metros yield 2–3% — less than the loan costs — so appreciation has to do all the work, and appreciation is uneven and slow to sell.
How much: The home you live in: up to 40% of net worth. Investment residential: no more than 15%, and never a second loan while the first is above 12% of income.
Role over ten years: Shelter and an inflation hedge, not a return engine. Its job is to be paid off by the time income stops.

Commercial — office, retail, warehousing

When to hold: When you can buy a leased Grade-A unit (or a share of one) with a lease of 3+ years and a yield of 6–9%, and you understand the tenant, not just the address.
Why: Yields two to three times residential, contractual escalations (typically 15% every three years), and institutional tenants who pay on the first of the month. The risks are vacancy and single-asset concentration.
How much: 10–20% of net worth. Below about ₹2 crore of deployable capital, listed REITs give the same exposure with liquidity and diversification — use them instead.
Role over ten years: The income leg of real assets: rent that behaves like a bond coupon with an inflation escalator.

PG / co-living

When to hold: When you or your family can actually operate it — occupancy, staff, food, compliance — and the location is within a kilometre of a college or IT park. It is a business that happens to own or lease a building.
Why: Run well, 10–15% on property cost versus 3% for a plain rental; run badly, a full-time headache with 60% occupancy. The return is operating skill, not the building.
How much: Treat it as a business allocation: capital you can also give time to. No more than 15% of net worth, funded without stretching the household's EMI load.
Role over ten years: A cash-flow business that also holds land — one of the few ways a family with a spare building can earn a double-digit yield on it.

Farmhouse

When to hold: As a lifestyle purchase bought outright — no loan — with clear title, an approach road, water and electricity actually connected. Weekend rental income is a bonus, not the thesis.
Why: Yields are 1–3% at best through rentals; appreciation is a location lottery; utility is real. Calling it an investment is how people overpay for it.
How much: Only from surplus after the core is funded: 10% of net worth at most, and never leveraged.
Role over ten years: Consumption dressed as an asset — perfectly fine, as long as the household calls it that in its own balance sheet.

Agricultural land

When to hold: When you meet the state's eligibility rules (several states restrict purchase by non-farmers), the title chain is clean (7/12 or jamabandi, mutation, no litigation), the horizon is 10–15 years, and the parcel sits on the path of a highway, ring road or expanding town.
Why: Long-run appreciation from conversion and urbanisation, capital gains exempt for rural agricultural land as defined in the Income-tax Act, and modest income from lease or crop. Against that: illiquid, regulation-heavy, and easy to buy badly.
How much: 10–15% of net worth at most, with no borrowed money and a written exit plan.
Role over ten years: The patient corner of the balance sheet — a long-duration real asset whose payoff arrives in one lump, years later, if the location thesis holds.

House rule. Every property we discuss gets the same four numbers written down: gross yield, cost of carry (loan, tax, maintenance, vacancy), the tax on exit, and the realistic time to sell. Most "great deals" fail on the third and fourth.

Ventures · sized to survive zero

Crypto assets

We treat crypto as venture capital, not as currency: positions sized to be survivable at −80% and meaningful at 10×, held across a full four-year cycle rather than traded. Indian tax — 30% flat, 1% TDS on every trade, no set-off of losses — makes churning ruinous, so the only sane strategy is to hold small and hold long.

Bitcoin (BTC)

When to hold: When you understand you own a scarce, bearer digital asset with 4-year halving cycles and 70–80% drawdowns, can hold for at least one full cycle, and keep it in self-custody or on a regulated exchange with two-factor authentication.
Why: A fixed supply of 21 million, the deepest liquidity in the asset class, and growing institutional and ETF ownership. It behaves as a high-beta store of value — not a hedge in a crash, but a long-run scarcity bet.
How much: 1–5% of investable assets. Rebalance profits out whenever it crosses 7% — that rule, followed, is what makes the position bearable.
Role over ten years: The asymmetric bet: small enough to ignore in a bad year, large enough to matter in a good decade.

Zcash (ZEC)

When to hold: When you want exposure to privacy-preserving payments as a thesis, accept that the token may go to zero, and only after the Bitcoin allocation is in place.
Why: Shielded transactions solve a real problem — financial privacy on public ledgers — but adoption is uncertain and regulators have pushed privacy coins off several exchanges. It is a technology bet with a real chance of failure.
How much: No more than 0.5% of investable assets.
Role over ten years: A venture position on privacy technology. It is not a core holding and should never be topped up to "average down".

Uniswap (UNI)

When to hold: When you believe on-chain exchange volume keeps growing and that governance — and eventually a share of protocol fees — gives the token value; and you can tolerate smart-contract and regulatory risk.
Why: The largest decentralised exchange; UNI is a claim on its governance and, if the fee switch is fully enabled, on its cash flows. A picks-and-shovels bet on DeFi activity rather than on any single coin.
How much: No more than 0.5–1% of investable assets.
Role over ten years: Optionality on the plumbing of on-chain finance. If DeFi matters in ten years, this is one of the few tokens with a plausible claim on the activity.

House rule. We will not recommend leverage, meme coins, staking on unregulated platforms, or trading in and out. Keep records of every buy — the 30% tax and 1% TDS are charged on each transaction, and losses cannot be offset against anything.

Hedges · they do not compound, they protect

Commodities

Commodities do not create earnings; they hedge. Gold hedges the rupee and panic, industrial metals ride capital-expenditure cycles, and agricultural commodities hedge the price risk of people who actually grow or process them. Sizes stay small and the purpose of every position is written down before it is bought.

Gold — Sovereign Gold Bonds, gold ETFs, physical

When to hold: Always, as the rupee hedge. Buy Sovereign Gold Bonds when a tranche is open (2.5% interest, no capital-gains tax at maturity); gold ETFs the rest of the time; physical only for what you will wear.
Why: Negatively correlated with equity in crises, and a steady rupee performer because rupee depreciation flows straight into the domestic gold price — roughly 10% a year over long periods. Insurance that has historically paid for itself.
How much: 5–10% of investable assets; trim above 15%.
Role over ten years: Crisis insurance and the rupee hedge. The asset that lets you rebalance into equity when everything else is red.

Mustard (rapeseed) — NCDEX futures or physical

When to hold: When you grow, crush or trade it and need to lock a price; or, rarely, as a tactical position on a monsoon or edible-oil import-duty view with a written stop-loss.
Why: Prices swing 30–40% on the crop and on import policy for edible oils. Futures exist so that a farmer can sell the harvest before it is harvested — that is their honest use.
How much: Farmers hedge up to their expected produce. Non-farmers: no more than 2% of investable assets, and only with a thesis and an exit date written down.
Role over ten years: A hedging tool and an occasional tactical trade — never an investment. Roll costs and margin calls eat casual positions.

Copper — MCX futures, or global metals ETFs via LRS

When to hold: On a 1–3 year electrification thesis: electric vehicles, grid build-out and data centres need copper faster than mines can be opened. Use MCX mini contracts sized to the margin you can lose, or an offshore metals ETF for unleveraged exposure.
Why: Structural demand growth against slow, capital-hungry supply. The risk is that futures are leveraged and cyclical: a global slowdown takes copper down 30% regardless of the long-run story.
How much: 0–3% of investable assets, tactically. Count the roll cost and the margin before the upside.
Role over ten years: A cyclical growth expression outside the equity book — the same industrial thesis as a metals stock, without the company-specific risk.

Silver — ETFs

When to hold: Alongside gold when industrial demand (solar, electronics) is in an up-cycle; more volatile than gold, so smaller.
Why: Part monetary metal, part industrial input — it rises with both fear and factories, and falls harder than gold when either fades.
How much: 2–3% of investable assets, inside the overall precious-metals cap of 10–15%.
Role over ten years: A higher-beta cousin of gold that adds a little growth to the hedge.

House rule. Commodity futures are marked to market daily and can wipe out a margin account in a week. If a position needs to be watched every day, it is too large for a household portfolio.

Income · institutional property for ₹300 a unit

REITs & InvITs

The way to own Grade-A offices, malls, power lines and toll roads without a broker, a tenant or stamp duty. Listed, regulated by SEBI, and required to distribute at least 90% of cash flows. For most households they replace the "investment flat" entirely.

Office REITs — Embassy Office Parks, Mindspace, Brookfield India

When to hold: When you need income and have a 5-year-plus horizon; buy when the distribution yield is above about 6.5% and occupancy is above 85%.
Why: Contracted rents from IT and global-capability-centre tenants, built-in escalations, professional management, and quarterly distributions. Interest-rate rises hurt the unit price; the rent keeps arriving.
How much: 5–10% of investable assets across two or three REITs.
Role over ten years: The rental income you wanted from property, with liquidity and without the phone calls. The natural home for the "income" bucket.

Retail REIT — Nexus Select Trust

When to hold: On a consumption-growth thesis, when the malls are above 95% occupancy and the yield is around 6–7%.
Why: Revenue-share leases with retailers give inflation-linked growth on top of the base rent; a well-located mall is one of the few real assets whose income rises with spending, not just with time.
How much: 2–5% of investable assets.
Role over ten years: Consumption-linked income — a different economic driver from offices, which is the point of holding both.

InvITs — IndiGrid, PowerGrid InvIT, NHAI InvIT

When to hold: When you want an 8–12% pre-tax cash yield and understand that part of it is your own capital coming back, because the underlying concessions expire.
Why: Regulated tariffs and availability-based revenue from transmission lines and toll roads — cash flows that barely notice the equity market. Growth is limited; the distribution is the return.
How much: 3–8% of investable assets, sized like a bond, not like a stock.
Role over ten years: Bond-like cash flow with an equity ticker. Excellent for the years just before and after income stops.

House rule. Distributions are taxed in parts (interest, dividend, return of capital) and the rules have changed more than once — the CA desk handles that. Buy on the exchange, not through anyone who calls you.

Selective · the seller sets the price

IPOs

An IPO is priced by the people selling it, on the day they choose, with a document they wrote. We apply for businesses we would be happy to hold for five years and skip the rest. Listing gains are a lottery ticket, not a strategy — and the grey-market premium is not information.

Mainboard IPO of a quality business at a fair price

When to hold: When the company is profitable, return on equity is above 15%, the promoter is not exiting fully, and the valuation is within about 20% of listed peers — and you intend to hold at least three years.
Why: Institutional anchor books and mainboard disclosure standards give a fair chance of a fair price. Sometimes the IPO is the only way into a new sector — defence, electronics manufacturing, hospital chains — at a sensible multiple.
How much: No more than 3% of investable assets per issue and 10% across all IPO positions, funded from the equity allocation, not on top of it.
Role over ten years: A disciplined entry into new businesses and sectors. Held, not flipped, it is just equity bought on a specific Tuesday.

SME IPO

When to hold: Rarely. Only if you have read the entire draft prospectus, know the promoter's history, understand that the minimum lot is ₹1–2 lakh, and can lose all of it.
Why: Thin floats, lightly reviewed disclosures and listing-day manipulation — SEBI itself has warned investors. The odds are structurally against the retail applicant.
How much: No more than 1% of investable assets in total. Zero is a respectable allocation.
Role over ten years: Speculation, sized like crypto. It has no role in a household plan beyond curiosity money.

Pre-IPO and unlisted shares

When to hold: Only through a reputed platform with demat delivery, at a valuation at or below listed peers, with a horizon that survives the six-month post-listing lock-in and the possibility that the IPO never comes.
Why: Sometimes a genuine discount to the eventual IPO price; often an opaque valuation and a long, illiquid wait. The information asymmetry is entirely against you.
How much: No more than 2% of investable assets.
Role over ten years: Venture-style optionality for people who can afford to forget the money exists for three years.

House rule. For every IPO we look at, the note answers three questions: why is the seller selling, what is the business worth on next year's earnings, and what would we pay for it in the secondary market a month later.

Bespoke · capital, roadmap, unit economics, exit

Research on your idea

You have a plan — a PG near a college, a franchise, converting the family farmland, a shop on the new highway. We turn it into numbers you can defend: how much capital it really needs, what the first 24 months look like, what has to be true for it to work, and how you get out if it does not.

Capital & roadmap memo

When to hold: Before you sign a lease, pay a token amount or tell your family it is happening.
Why: Most ventures fail on capital planning, not on the idea: the fit-out costs 40% more, working capital was never counted, and the first year of losses was not funded. We count all of it.
How much: Deliverable: total investment required (capex, deposits, working capital, contingency), a phased 24-month roadmap, and the funding mix — own money, family, bank — with EMI impact on the household.
Role over ten years: Illustration: a 30-bed PG on a leased building in an IT corridor typically needs ₹45–70 lakh all-in and reaches break-even at roughly 65% occupancy; payback in 3–4 years if it does.

Unit economics model

When to hold: When the idea has survived the capital memo and you want to know what the business earns per bed, per table, per acre or per square foot.
Why: Occupancy, price, cost per unit, break-even and sensitivity to the three variables that matter — so you know which lever to pull when reality differs from the plan.
How much: Deliverable: a working spreadsheet you own, with base, downside and upside cases and the monthly cash-flow path.
Role over ten years: Illustration: a franchise cafe is a real-estate decision disguised as a food business — rent above 12% of sales kills it regardless of the coffee.

Risk & exit review

When to hold: Before committing, and again at month 12.
Why: Regulatory (licences, land-use, zoning), concentration (how much of the family balance sheet is in one bet), liquidity (how long to sell) and the honest "what if it fails" — with the household numbers attached.
How much: Deliverable: a one-page risk register, a pre-agreed stop-loss for the venture, and the exit options ranked by likely recovery.
Role over ten years: Illustration: converting agricultural land to a farmhouse often halves its buyer pool; the exit review is what decides whether the conversion is worth it.

House rule. Idea research is a fixed-fee, written engagement. We do not take a share of the business and we do not introduce you to anyone who pays us to be introduced.

What we will not do

Six things you will never hear from us.

"Guaranteed returns"

Nothing in markets is guaranteed and anyone who says otherwise is selling something.

"This fund pays us"

We take no commission, trail, or referral fee from any product, builder or exchange.

"Borrow to invest"

Leverage for investment — margin, loans against shares, personal loans into crypto — is never recommended.

"Trust us, no need to write it down"

Every recommendation comes with a written rationale and a stated reason to exit.

"Time the market"

We size positions and rebalance on rules. We do not predict next quarter.

"Your neighbour did it"

Your allocation follows your statement, your goals and your temperament — nobody else's.

Every plan starts with the same page.

Your personal income statement and balance sheet. Five minutes to fill in, one day to get a written first review — free, and yours to keep.

Educational content. SlateFlow Capital's SEBI Investment Adviser registration is under process; nothing on this page is a recommendation to buy or sell any security. Allocation ranges are illustrative and depend on your statement, goals and temperament. See Disclosures.