Purpose The purpose of this study is to gauge the awareness and perception of Indian individual investors about a new fintech innovation known as robo-advisors in the wealth management scenario. Robo-advisors are comprehensive automated online advisory platforms that help investors in managing wealth by recommending portfolio allocations, which are based on certain algorithms. Design/methodology/approach This is a phenomenological qualitative study that used five focussed group discussions to gather the stipulated information. Purposive sampling was used and the sample comprised investors who actively invest in the Indian stock market. A semi-structured questionnaire and homogeneous discussions were used for this study. Discussion time for all the groups was 203 min. One of the authors moderated the discussions and translated the audio recordings verbatim. Subsequently, content analysis was carried out by using the NVIVO 12 software (QSR International) to derive different themes. Findings Factors such as cost-effectiveness, trust, data security, behavioural biases and sentiments of the investors were observed as crucial points which significantly impacted the perception of the investors. Furthermore, several suggestions on different ways to enhance the awareness levels of investors were brought up by the participants during the discussions. It was observed that some investors perceive robo-advisors as only an alternative for fund/wealth managers/brokers for quantitative analysis. Also, they strongly believe that human intervention is necessary to gauge the emotions of the investors. Hence, at present, robo-advisors for the Indian stock market, act only as a supplementary service rather than a substitute for financial advisors. Research limitations/implications Due to the explorative nature of the study and limited participants, the findings of the study cannot be generalised to the overall population. Future research is imperative to study the dynamic nature of artificial intelligence (AI) theories and investigate whether they are able to capture the sentiments of individual investors and human sentiments impacting the market. Practical implications This study gives an insight into the awareness, perception and opinion of the investors about robo-advisory services. From a managerial perspective, the findings suggest that additional attention needs to be devoted to the adoption and inculcation of AI and machine learning theories while building algorithms or logic to come up with effective models. Many investors expressed discontent with the current design of risk profiles of the investors. This helps to provide feedback for developers and designers of robo-advisors to include advanced and detailed programming to be able to do risk profiling in a more comprehensive and precise manner. Social implications In the future, robo-advisors will change the wealth management scenario. It is well-established that data is the new oil for all businesses in the present times. Technologies such as robo-advisor, need to evolve further in terms of predicting unstructured data, improvising qualitative analysis techniques to include the ability to gauge emotions of investors and markets in real-time. Additionally, the behavioural biases of both the programmers and the investors need to be taken care of simultaneously while designing these automated decision support systems. Originality/value This study fulfils an identified gap in the literature regarding the investors’ perception of new fintech innovation, that is, robo-advisors. It also clarifies the confusion about the awareness level of robo-advisors amongst Indian individual investors by examining their attitudes and by suggesting innovations for future research. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to investigate the awareness, perception and attitudes of individual investors towards robo-advisors.

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The transcendence of automated digital services is challenging already established financial advisory services. Robo-advisory is gaining popularity where human touch is missing while making the investment decision. The present study is aimed to understand the awareness of robo-advisors amongst millennials in India along with their perception towards robo-advisory services. A self-administered questionnaire was sent out to the college students, and 288 college students responded to this. The responses were analysed using independent sample t-test, Anova, and factor analysis using IBM SPSS 22. The findings indicate that there is a lack of awareness about robo-advisors amongst college students. Measures should be taken by universities and colleges to include this as a part of the syllabus along with industry-academia partnership to create awareness as these students will be earning and investing in the next 1-3 years.

Alfred Lord Tennyson has said in his poem "The Passing of Arthur" that old order changeth, yielding place to new , and God fulfills himself in many ways, lest one good custom should corrupt the world. The women of the middle class in India seem to have adopted the words of the great poet in their lives, almost practically. Women who would behave in a particular way for centuries together have reverted to a new style of living. Women around the globe have more control over their life choices and path than ever before. Women are entering the workforce at lightning speed They have career opportunities and a salary much higher than the women of the previous decades. Now the women have a greater contribution to their family's income than before. Today, it is the woman in a household who makes the decisions in the majority of purchases-not only for her personal purchases but with purchases related to the entire family. This is a great challenge for many companies to understand, because it requires a huge shift in thinking and how business has historically been done. This research is done with the objective to see if the orientation towards of women is the same as a few decades back. For this a few comfort oriented aspects, apparel orientation and recreational aspects are studied. A questionnaire was designed to see the orientation of middle class women. For this data was collected from middle class women who acceding to report by NCAER belong to a family having an annual household income between 3.4 lakhs to 17 lakhs. The questionnaire was filled by women who were then divided into two groups. Group one comprised in the age group 20-140 and group two comprised of women above 40 and then a comparison was made if the orientation between the two groups was same or different. It was done with the intention to see that if differences do exist then if may be of help to marketers to change their products and services accordingly which may in turn b beneficial for the omen consumers and to the marketers as well.

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