Vivek Bajaj, an IIM Graduate having extensive experience in Indian Markets as a Trader and Investor for over 15 years has been constantly adopting new technologies for the in-house traders in his family-run prop desk. He conceptualized a mobile application – StockEdge that could help his traders get information at their fingertips. This idea was carved into reality by his childhood friend, Vinay Pagaria who has a unique blend of finance and technology. Vineet Patawari, another IIM Indore alumnus and Chartered Accountant, who has over 8 years of rich experience in the domain of education and passion for digital marketing, has taken it upon himself to take the growth of StockEdge to an altogether different trajectory.
With Elearnmarkets & StockEdge, we are playing the role of a catalyst in the democratization of financial markets and the personal finance industry. We are empowering individuals to make their own decisions with respect to investing and trading.
Let’s cut right to the chase. Financial education is never taught in school. The things we learned from school are far from the financial encounters in life. The most important factor in life is being financially literate. There is a need for proper education and research before you drop a dime in any investment or business. For Afterall, An investment in knowledge pays the best interest!
If you think investment education is expensive, just try ignorance!
This is where the trio Vivek, Vineet and Vinay have struck the chord –
Vivek Bajaj, Vineet Patawari and their partner Vinay Pagaria had started their ventures elearnmarkets.com and stockedge.com with a vision to simplify finance for everyone by providing the right learning and relevant analytics for effective decision making in financial markets.
Vivek brings to table 15 years of experience of trading, investing and managing a successful proprietary trading desk. His strong educational background coupled with practical experience led to the birth of Kredent InfoEdge.
Vinay, a childhood friend of Vivek has a vast experience of 15 years of developing fintech softwares. His passion has led to the birth and continuous evolution of StockEdge.
Vineet, a growth hacker at heart and marketer at mind was instrumental in the development of Elearnmarkets. With more than 10 years’ experience in managing digital business and his deep passion for digital marketing led to the penetration of both the products in the market.
They share a deep passion for technology and have a strong background in finance from their experience and education. This naturally made them venture into FinTech space that has taken the world by storm today.
In Conversation with Vineet Patawari :
How do you think your startup benefits the larger section of the society?
Investment in financial assets is complex and confusing. Traditionally there has been a high dependency on financial intermediaries for the right advice. However, the wealth creation from financial assets has been limited to only the selected population.
Only 2% of India’s population is invested in non-banking financial assets. The core reason for such low penetration is lack of trust. This can only be solved with widespread unbiased knowledge dissemination.
We are empowering retail investors with the right knowledge – Knowledge in the form of access to financial data, unbiased analytics and right learnings in the most effective and affordable manner.
What excites you the most about your startup?
With Elearnmarkets & StockEdge we are playing the role of a catalyst in the democratization of financial markets and the personal finance industry. We are empowering individuals to make their own decisions with respect to investing and trading. This is adding enormous value in their lives by helping them to grow their wealth and avoid erosion of capital. It has been an exciting journey so far and it will surely be amazing to watch the paradigm shift in the way people invest.
What challenges did you face when you were starting out?
There is this false belief that individuals have adequate knowledge to manage their money. People lose money by taking wrong decisions and by not investing in one’s own learning and development. This mindset is gradually changing as traditional methods of financial management are evolving. Especially the young population, millennials are changing the business landscape across industries.
We believe now things are changing at a fast pace and our thrust of making people empowered to make their own financial decisions by providing the right knowledge, right analytical tools and collaboration with others will go a long way in the democratization of the personal finance industry.
How did you build your team?
Team building has been the most challenging as well as the most fulfilling part of being an entrepreneur. The most important aspect is to hire and/or nurture the right person for the right job, empowering them to make decisions, make mistakes and move forward. As an entrepreneur, we made hiring mistakes and corrected them. The most preferred mode of adding team members has been internal referrals. LinkedIn has also proved very useful. Keeping employees first runs in the DNA of the organization.
How did you raise your first funding? Is there any plan to raise more funds?
Kredent Trading desk, is one of the largest proprietary trading desks in India and the largest one in Kolkata. We have been in Stock Market trading since 2000 and have over 150 full-time traders. Kredent Academy was started as a backward integration of this trading desk for adding good talent to the core business. Thus, the initial capital of the business was introduced by the owners of the trading desks. I am one of the founder owners of the desks apart from my other family members.
For 10 years the business was running on captive revenue and internal accruals. We decided to expand our working and take external funds in 2018. Some very good investors who believed in that we are doing decided to give us some funds for our initial product developments. Out of the external investors Shri Ramesh Damani, the famous value investor and Shri Dinesh Agarwal, owner of IndiaMart.com are known names. The total money invested in the company to date is to the tune of around USD 1.1 million.
As we add transaction technology in our workings, we are planning to go for another round of fundraising very soon.
What would be your 3 cents to aspiring entrepreneurs?
Here are my 5 mantras for young and aspiring entrepreneur to help them get started.
- Have a vision with a plan to execute
- Think long term
- Identify pain areas
- Good team
- Right investors
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Quite an initiative. I am sure these smarties have made sure their technology is enabled to learn and improvise, using user inputs experience.