Can we get introduced to the Founders of TradeGyani?
Rahul Pahuja

Rahul is the Founder of TradeGyani. TradeGyani is created of his personal experiences of watching his friends/family ask for investing advice and struggling to put together a portfolio strategy through cobbled together information from word-of-mouth sources.

Having begun his career as a research analyst with Copal Partners (acquired by Moody’s), he went on to rise through the ranks - there he was the youngest employee to be promoted to Senior Vice President and led the buy-side practice of the firm in North Americas. After Moody’s acquisition, Rahul played an instrumental role in building Moody’s captive in India.

Rahul did his MBA from Purdue University & PG Diploma in International Business from Amity & has a bachelor’s degree in computer science.

Abhinav Dube

Abhinav is the co-founder of TradeGyani. He has an Engineering Degree in Computer Science & a Post Graduate Diploma in Information Technology from I.I.T Kharagpur. He has over 14 years of experience writing Java-based solutions primarily in the domain of Capital Markets/Equity Derivatives within Investment Banking.

F.I.R.E (Financially Independent, Retiring Early) is his new mantra – the one thing that he now wants to bring as an option to the table for himself, everyone around him and the public at large.

Brijendra Singh

Brijendra is the co-founder of TradeGyani. Brijendra started his career with a start-up; he was one of the early employees and played a key role in building their business. He has over 14 years of experience in IT and spent the last 7 plus years in JP Morgan managing the new initiatives on the technology side for the credit card business.

Brijendra has faced the challenges faced by a typical retail investor - limited bandwidth to identify stocks himself or figuring out a good advisor who can manage his money. So, joining TradeGyani was a no brainer for him

What is the Vision behind the idea of TradeGyani? How did it originate?

The biggest problem for retail investors is – “Trust” - Without the knowhow, it’s difficult for retail investors to create wealth and they are left with only two options – either learn and do it themselves – a path that requires significant time and is fraught with significant risk or to hire an advisor, who are primarily focused on servicing the HNI’s - creating a massive gap b/w full-service wealth advisory to self-directed investment.

To bridge these gaps, we launched TradeGyani with the aim to help the masses invest in the market smartly.
We’re doing this by:

a. Creating an expert network of advisors, who share their real-portfolios on the platform bringing affordable & transparent service – the kind that is only available to HNIs now

b. The social media aspect – where users can learn from each other by seeing their trading activities, share their views on the entire ecosystem - right from individual stocks to feedback of advisors, brokers, policy, economy and their individual experiences.

c. Analysis, virtual trading tool (risk-free learning), Monitoring, rebalancing, and execution – all under one umbrella so that investors don’t have to jump from system to system for simple tasks

Our ultimate vision is to bridge the trust divide such that people think of stock markets as a first choice for investing goals.



What were the key challenges and bottlenecks faced in the Journey of TradeGyani?

When you work in an industry that has had trust issues you are bound to hit roadblocks acquiring customers. Once you acquire even a few thousand, a considerable part of your energies goes into keeping the communication lines open.

These challenges are not trivial and a lot of fun to work around.

What are the key features of TradeGyani that differentiate it from other Investment platforms? How did the Mascot come in place?

Platforms do monitoring, thematic portfolios, screeners, or social media in isolation.
We’ve built an ecosystem that adds value to all the participants:

a. Retail investors get access to the portfolios managed by experienced advisors, transparently & at a low cost.

b. We handhold them throughout the investment journey by providing real-time rebalancing updates

c. We also have various tools like virtual trading, learning sessions with experts & portfolio monitoring tools that helps a first-time investor to come up the learning curve quickly

d. For advisors, we become a marketing tool & a new source of revenue

e. For brokerage firms, we become a lead gen tool

Wit and Persistence of Chanakya combined with the calm and patience of Buddha make them a perfect mascot for this journey.

What was the Go-To-Market Strategy at the time of inception in the already competitive market?

We focus on digital medium primarily and have come up with innovative strategies to acquire customers at a low cost. One of the strategies that have worked very well is the trading contest. Users are given virtual money to participate and are tasked to beat the benchmark and other contestants – it’s a lot of fun, a lot of learning plus the user gets cash rewards every week. You can learn about our live contest here.



How did you overcome the challenge of Investment not being the first option due to low risk-taking appetite and low trust on Markets, in a market like India?

It’s quite tricky - when it comes to investing everyone remembers Harshad Mehta and Ketan Parikh. Once people get over this fear, they start referring to the Damanis, Jhujhunwalas, and Buffets of the world.

We are trying to overcome these challenges by focusing on financial literacy (Q&A Sessions by experts, conferences, virtual trading tool, etc.) with a focus on transparency.

Would you like to share some statistics about TradeGyani?

We have more than 8000 users across the country, with more than 50% from Tier 2 & 3 cities further validating the need for a solution like ours. Users on TradeGyani have created close to 11,000 portfolios generating a lot of trading ideas for others to follow.

We have partnered with 8 well-known advisors & two leading discount brokerage firms for trade execution. Trading volume is over $1.2m in real money and $30m in virtual transactions.

Which are the cities TradeGyani is operational in? Are there any expansion plans on the cards?

Anyone with a smartphone, tablet or a computer and Internet connection can use TradeGyani. We are an online-only platform with customers residing across India.

What is your message for the Entrepreneurship enthusiasts?
No one can say it better than Naval - Learn to sell. Learn to build. If you can do both, you will be unstoppable.

For more information about TradeGyani, visit their Website Their updates could be followed on: Facebook | YouTube | Twitter | LinkedIn