A
About us
Discover our
role in your life
Imagine you need to climb Mount Everest. Besides preparing for it physically and mentally, the first thing you’ll need to do is to find a wise sherpa with the experience to guide you along the way.
Likewise, we are our client’s financial life coaches. We not only prepare you to reach your Mount Everest, but we’ll walk with you and ensure you reach your financial destination. Yes, there’ll be a lot of turbulence in the next 30-100 years that we’ll work through together, and our role will be to help you navigate these times, make course corrections, and safely reach your financial goals — not just for yourself, but for your family and generations to come.
There’s probably a lot of impressive things we could highlight here, but let’s just keep it simple. We have real expertise in family office, wealth management, alternative investments, efficient market hypothesis, global investment performance standards and more that we can speak to you about. We can also discuss equity, real estate, gold, venture capital, private equity, and startup investing on a deeper level.
But there’s the thing: the work we do isn't really about money. It's about helping you live the financial life you’ve always imagined — or what we like to call a Return on Life. Our mission is to help you live your happiest financial life, with your money, so you never ever worry about how you’re going to cover it all. Ultimately, your dollars aren’t the client — you and your family are.
Discover our
role in your life
Imagine you need to climb Mount Everest. Besides preparing for it physically and mentally, the first thing you’ll need to do is to find a wise sherpa with the experience to guide you along the way.
Likewise, we are our client’s financial life coaches. We not only prepare you to reach your Mount Everest, but we’ll walk with you and ensure you reach your financial destination. Yes, there’ll be a lot of turbulence in the next 30-100 years that we’ll work through together, and our role will be to help you navigate these times, make course corrections, and safely reach your financial goals — not just for yourself, but for your family and generations to come. Read More
There’s probably a lot of impressive things we could highlight here, but let’s just keep it simple. We have real expertise in family office, wealth management, alternative investments, efficient market hypothesis, global investment performance standards and more that we can speak to you about. We can also discuss equity, real estate, gold, venture capital, private equity, and startup investing on a deeper level.
But there’s the thing: the work we do isn’t really about money. It’s about helping you live the financial life you’ve always imagined — or what we like to call a Return on Life. Our mission is to help you live your happiest financial life, with your money, so you never ever worry about how you’re going to cover it all. Ultimately, your dollars aren’t the client — you and your family are.
4 books
Decades of experience
1,000+ blog columns
8 sketchbooks
O
Our guarantee of care
“We’ll take care of you just like we'd take care of our loved one's money. We’ll take better care of you than anyone else outside of your family would.”
our stories
Amar Pandit
CFA, CFP™ – Founder
Amar Pandit is a CFA Charterholder from CFA Institute, Virginia, and is a CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER™ professional. He is also an alumnus of the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. Amar is the Founder of Happyness Factory, a world-class, planning-focused, goal-based online investing platform based in India through which he aims to help every family save and invest wisely. He is also the Founder of HappyRich Capital, which helps families live the lives they have imagined with their money (a HappyRich Life).
Amar Pandit
Amar Pandit is a CFA Charterholder from CFA Institute, Virginia, and is a CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER™ professional. He is also an alumnus of the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.
Amar is the Founder of Happyness Factory, a world-class, planning-focused, goal-based online investing platform based in India through which he aims to help every family save and invest wisely. He is also the Founder of HappyRich Capital, which helps families live the lives they have imagined with their money (a HappyRich Life).
He is very passionate about spreading financial literacy and does so through his sharp and analytical posts published regularly on www.happyrichinvestor.com and www.happyrichadvisor.com.
He is the author of five bestselling books, eight sketch books and over 1200 columns for various newspapers and publications such as The Economic Times, Mint, and The Indian Express.
He lives in Mumbai with his wife Laxmi, two daughters Reet and Preet, parents Nalini and Prabhakar, and their pet Fudge.
Riddhi Jain
CFP – Vice President (Planning)
I am a Certified Financial Planner (CFP) in the US and India and have a MBA in Capital Markets. I have 11+ years of experience working as a Financial Advisor and am heading the Financial Planning team at MFA Capital India. I have been advising and coaching High Net Worth Individuals that include Doctors, Corporate Executives, Business Owners, and Celebrities, over the years.
Riddhi Jain
I am a Certified Financial Planner (CFP) in the US and India and have a MBA in Capital Markets. I have 11+ years of experience working as a Financial Advisor and am heading the Financial Planning team at MFA Capital India. I have been advising and coaching High Net Worth Individuals that include Doctors, Corporate Executives, Business Owners, and Celebrities, over the years.
My Father played a key role in instilling strong money values since my childhood, hence I have always been passionate about personal finance. My early days at MFA Capital paved my view of the future of financial advice and my own career roadmap. It made me realise that the true essence of wealth management lies in holistically managing clients Financial Lives, and is way beyond just managing their money and portfolios. My focus on Financial Life Planning from early stages of my career gave me an opportunity to understand a wide array of client scenarios, and I have helped my clients navigate through their life situations by applying our world class practices and strategies.
One of the most satisfying aspects of my job is playing a central role in clients’ and their family’s financial life, partnering with them and their gen next towards achieving financial independence. With a belief that personal finance is more about personal and less about finance, I have been able to build trusting relationships with our clients’ families and am a single point of contact in case of any eventuality.
I joined HappyRich Capital, US in July 2022 as Vice President – Planning. My goal is to apply my 11+ years of experience in financial life planning, to help our US clients achieve their financial goals with the same world class client experience. Furthermore, one of my main goals will be to help US clients navigate and integrate various financial aspects of cross border US – India planning and build a multi-generational financial legacy in the US.
On a personal front, I am a Mother to two beautiful twin girls Mira and Myra with whom I share a birthday! In my free time, I love walking, listening to music, and spiritual podcasts.
Anil Kothari
CFA – Vice President (Research)
I am a CFA® charter holder and a member of the CFA Institute and the CFA Society of India. I was fortunate to start my career in capital markets and investment management with MFA Capital India in 2012 as the world was coming out of the Global Financial Crisis. I was very keen on learning what exactly happened in the 2008 Global Financial Crisis. This curiosity coupled with my CFA studies and financial life planning work experience taught me important lessons such as, “What not to do for successful investing”, “Real financial planning is not about being more right, but it is about being less wrong”. These lessons and rigorous investment research form the cornerstone of my portfolio management strategies.
Anil Kothari
I am a CFA® charter holder and a member of the CFA Institute and the CFA Society of India. I was fortunate to start my career in capital markets and investment management with MFA Capital India in 2012 as the world was coming out of the Global Financial Crisis. I was very keen on learning what exactly happened in the 2008 Global Financial Crisis. This curiosity coupled with my CFA studies and financial life planning work experience taught me important lessons such as, “What not to do for successful investing”, “Real financial planning is not about being more right, but it is about being less wrong”. These lessons and rigorous investment research form the cornerstone of my portfolio management strategies.
The events of the past 12 years from Global Financial Crisis, taper tantrums, Brexit, Euro crisis, Covid pandemic, war and war like situations and their impact on financial markets confirmed my understanding that investor management is far more crucial than investment management. I was glad that I could play a pivotal role in my clients’ life by guiding them away from panic and not using fear as an excuse to make existential and catastrophic changes in their portfolios.
I am working as an Associate Vice President in MFA Capital, a goals based investment management firm in India advising Indian clients across the globe. A major part of my job is to reinforce the belief in clients that financial life planning goes beyond investment portfolios, portfolio management, investment returns, and timing the market. It is about understanding that investment portfolios in conjunction with tax planning, asset location in appropriate accounts, estate planning, and following a disciplined investment philosophy are to be used as stepping stones towards fulfilling financial goals.
I am passionate about Financial Life Planning, Economics, macro research, trends, learning about new technologies, and developments. It excites me to factor all these aspects objectively in creating and managing investment portfolios.
I joined HappyRich Capital, US in July 2022 and would continue to focus on having happier clients and providing richer client experiences. I am heading Research and am responsible for curating investments and constructing model portfolios for the Firm. One area I am focusing more on is Cross Border Planning for families with ties between the US and India. In addition to Financial Life Planning and Investment Management in the US, I want to advise Indian origin families to mitigate pain points related to inheritance, asset movement, asset location, and asset allocation between US and India.
I enjoy playing Cricket and traveling when not deep diving in investments and economic research. Cricket has been an integral part of my life. India’s victory in the 2011 World Cup coincided with my entry in the capital markets and investment management world and it shaped my outlook towards life planning. Setting goals, knowing why those goals are important, asset allocation and diversification that suits me and my goals, disciplined investment policy execution, ignoring short term noise, being patient with investments and being in the game (time in the market) longer would always be the core tenets of my investment approach.
Abhijeet Mhatre
CEO
A Father of wonderful 2.5 children Karan, Aanya and Percy the Pomsky. Graduated in Electronics Engineering in 1995 from Bombay. Had the privilege of working on high visibility projects in organizations such as Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch, GE Capital, Oracle Corporation, Genworth Financial, Kellogg and Los Angeles Unified School District. Worked in and delivered analytics and reporting platforms in business domains across financial services, consumer finance, education, and supply chain industries. Built big data and analytics platforms for Market Risk and Operational Risk focusing on Risk Analysis and CCAR (Fed) Stress Testing. Last corporate job was as an Executive Director at Morgan Stanley Technology (2007) for 14 years.
Abhijeet Mhatre
A Father of wonderful 2.5 children Karan, Aanya and Percy the Pomsky. Graduated in Electronics Engineering in 1995 from Bombay. Had the privilege of working on high visibility projects in organizations such as Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch, GE Capital, Oracle Corporation, Genworth Financial, Kellogg and Los Angeles Unified School District. Worked in and delivered analytics and reporting platforms in business domains across financial services, consumer finance, education, and supply chain industries. Built big data and analytics platforms for Market Risk and Operational Risk focusing on Risk Analysis and CCAR (Fed) Stress Testing. Last corporate job was as an Executive Director at Morgan Stanley Technology (2007) for 14 years.
My college engineering and critical projects’ experience taught me the importance of completing work within deadlines no matter what it takes. Learnt the importance of building simple, easy to use tangible solutions and the role that technology plays in all spheres of our life. It also taught me to learn and lead with curiosity and innovation and concurrently work with geographically diverse clients, peer teams and vendors (I was super lucky to build and work with local teams in India, Japan, China, Hungary, US, UK, Canada and Mexico).
Starting from my first job, I was always interested in and fascinated by personal finance.
Job, Life and Career Transitions
My job and life transitions have coincided with bear markets, recessions and of course market crashes! I was right at the epicenter of 2001 dot com crash having joined Oracle Corporation, and had just moved to the US. Luckily, I survived and thrived. Heard several horror stories of friends and colleagues losing all their savings in the crash. Some even said, “Do not invest in 401K”. Glad that I did not follow that advice and kept it simple.
The resolve to learn more about personal finance strengthened multi-fold upon finding myself at the epicenter of Global Financial Crisis, right when I started a new job at Morgan Stanley. We had Karan in December 2008 (life transition) and the thought of losing my job did cross my mind, however, I also realized that this has nothing to do with my personal financial plan.
While looking at 2001 dotcom bust, 2008 Global Financial crisis, and 2020 pandemic, I asked myself, “Are financial times really that uncertain as the media portrays?”, “Do my passion, values and life transitions depend on market economics and herd mentality which I cannot control?”. I did not understand what the fuss was all about and why are people stressing out so much? I had always planned my personal financial process properly and did not need to worry. My process was rock solid, and the foundation of financial planning was strong. My why was clear. Process for decision making was clear.
While I was confident through these 3 bear markets, I realized that people need help to plan, meet their goals, live their purpose and not to focus on what experts say on TV. Transitions happen, life happens irrespective of market conditions, so why shouldn’t goals be met and why couldn’t one live the life they dreamt of despite downturns and economic crises? I wanted to spread this message far and wide. This message and my passion towards personal finance and investing helped me take the entrepreneurial plunge to do something I love and go all in as an independent financial advisor. Here I am, at HappyRich Capital amidst a global pandemic and recession (a hallmark of my job transitions so far).
I feel humbled that I was able to epitomize the HappyRich mantra confidently after three job (and three life) transitions through three severely adverse market crises realizing that it is a market crisis and not your/ our crisis. It is amazing to live a life where you can align your capital (use of time, energy and money) with what’s important to you (your values and purpose). I went through that experience, and at HappyRich Capital, I want to help uncover this process for everyone we work with.
I live in Monroe Township, NJ with my wife Maria and kids Karan, Aanya and Percy. When not working, you will find me running, tending to my vegetable garden, learning new Cricket skills (finally learnt to bowl the carrom ball), traveling and soaking in different cultures.