Want to book airline tickets? Try your local stock broker

2011 was not an easy year for investors in the stock markets. The 25 percent crash in the BSE Sensex last year not only affected investors sentiment but also made it difficult for many sub-brokers to carry on their business as fears over slowing economic growth and a huge fiscal gap took centre stage.

This had a drastic effect on the brokerage industry as volumes declined and investors shied away from investing in the markets. So what were they to do? Well for starters don’t be surprised when the next time you get a call from a sub-broker asking you if there is any property for you to let out in your area, according to an article in The Hindu Business Line ( HBL).

“Kindly call me for booking flight, train or bus tickets. You can call me for pre-paid, post-paid, broadband, data card, DTH, bill payments, " an sms sent from a sub-broker, reported HBL.

The sharp fall in volumes have led to sub-brokers resorting to other means to earn an income. In the month of December, the average daily turnover had dropped to Rs 1,880 crore from Rs 3,493 crore in January 2011, reflecting a drop of almost 46 percent.

Many sub-brokers are even finding it hard to cover their fixed costs. “It was a really tough phase for me because I had to do some thing to cover fixed cost at least…..decided to offer hotel bookings, flight and rail booking services to earn some revenue”, said Pradeep Agarwal, sub-broker with Angel Broking to HBL.

With all the volatility and risk aversion floating around, putting one’s money to good use has been a challenging task.

In fact Firstpost had reported earlier that many equity brokers have diversified from being pure brokers to wealth managers to doing everything that a non-banking finance company does. With mounting cost of branches and declining brokerage income, broking firms have moved onto other segments for revenue.