The financial sector is one of the most dynamic industries when it comes to technology adaptation. The sector is known for changing and updating frequently and therefore it becomes significant for the consumers to develop a better understanding pertaining to the industry to remain relevant. To understand the relevance of better awareness and training with regards to the financial segment, Rashi Aditi Ghosh of Elets News Network (ENN) spoke to Vivek Bajaj, founder of stock market analytics platform STOCKEDGE and financial market learning portal ELEARNMARKETS. During the interaction, Bajaj spoke about the growth trajectory of his organisation and plan of action amid and beyond the pandemic.
Excerpts:
1. Please give us an overview of your products and solutions.
In 2014, we realised that the Financial Market Education industry in India is very unstructured and fragmented.
Hence, we launched Elearnmarkets (ELM) to streamline and structure the journey for individuals who wants to make a career in the financial markets. is a financial market training platform & app where we have 200+ market experts who are training people on various aspects of stock markets and related aspects such as Stock Markets, Commodities, Currency, Mutual Fund, Insurance, Financial Planning and Wealth Management. The Edtech platform offers more than 100 career-oriented online courses, many of which provide the students with a joint certification from renowned industry bodies like NSE Academy, NCDEX and MCX. It also regularly conducts workshops and webinars on various financial topics, which are conducted by market experts and celebrity stock market trainers. Their expert-led recorded and live online finance courses are available in English, Hindi, Bengali, Telugu, Marathi and Gujarati.
These products are available on a freemium model with over 1Million registered users already availing the benefits of it. Elearnmarkets is available on multiple platforms with over 2.2 Million page views/month on our website.
In 2016, we launched our second product StockEdge (SE), which started as a sidekick to help learners get structured data of listed companies along with cutting edge analytics.
StockEdge is India’s top and fastest-growing Equity markets and mutual fund research platform, primarily based on NSE and BSE data. It helps the Indian Stock market Traders and Investors take better decisions by providing them with awesome end-of-day analytics and visualizations and alerts. It also helps the young population to learn about various facets of Equity markets and Mutual-Funds through the Learn section and at the same time analyse the market data in the best possible manner.
StockEdge has got 2 Million app downloads on the play store and app store combined. With more than 30000 reviews, it is one of the most highly-rated apps with a 4.4/5 rating. The majority of its users are in the age bracket of 25-34 years.
It has recently introduced StockEdge Club, a community of stock market investors. It focuses on providing education and networking opportunities to the members both online and through its chapters in eight cities across India.
2. What help does your platform offer to the Stock market Traders and Investors for making better decisions?
StockEdge is a niche player concentrating on the finance sector, which intends to meet lifetime needs of learning finance, tracking financial markets, earning & managing money. No other existing platform combines all the requirements of a learner & practitioner of finance in such a compact and simple manner. Moreover, for an enhanced learning experience the analytics, data, financial statement from StockEdge are integrated with the respective course modules in Elearnmarkets. StockEdge works with a single objective of Simplifying Finance for All.
Secondly, in the financial market education ecosystem, we have a lot of traders and investors who have vast hands-on experience and conduct their own training programs. Then there are well-renowned courses in the field of finance, tax, audits such as CA, CFA, and CS. However, there was no structured way of making a career in Financial Markets.
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This is where Elearnmarkets, for the first time in the Financial Market education industry has streamlined and structured the journey for individuals who wants to make a career in the financial markets. Our courses are certified by the National Stock Exchange (NSE), Multi Commodity Exchange (MCX), and National Commodity & Derivatives Exchange Limited (NCDEX) which gives credibility and helps individuals to achieve their career goals.
3. StockEdge and Elearnmarkets, raised growth capital Rs 10 Crores from Kotak Securities Limited. How is it going to help you with your expansion?
This investment by Kotak Securities is a big validation of the value we are adding to a retail investor’s journey. This strategic partnership will propel us in a different growth trajectory and we plan to grow from 2 million users currently to 10millions in the next 2 years. This fund will be used to enhance our product capabilities and to create brand awareness of Elearnmarkets &StockEdge. We will soon raise more capital in our Series A round.
4. Did you face any challenges post the covid outbreak? How are dealing with them?
Like every vertical, the financial market was inflicted by the Pandemic, and the results were cumbersome. While there was de-growth in the first few months, there was a significant recovery afterward. This acted as a catalyst for our business – to jump-start and grow. Since the market was alive and steady, while people were in temporary retirement, both Elearnmarkets and StockEdge witnessed a surge in their user base. Elearnmarkets saw 3X exponential growth in its overall user base! As of now, their focus is on content development in more regional languages. This will help in increasing participation and penetration into more customer segments. The founders believe that now is the moment for people to start investing in stock markets because the majority have bank accounts, Insurances, and are aware of other financial aspects. And they aim to be the user’s holistic consultant in every step.
Furthermore, the market is still vulnerable to crashes since it’s still in economic distress. And such a scenario makes people petrified about losing their money. Therefore, StockEdge and Elearnmarkets team strive to incorporate more knowledge and analytics in their platform to help people during wear and tear.
5. StockEdge has got over 2Million app downloads on the play store and app store combined. How are you taking this achievement forward?
We want to become an integrated solution provider for individual investors in India in the domain of personal financial management. We started with knowledge offerings because it is the core DNA of our organization. Through knowledge, we are helping the users to connect with us and consume our various forms of content like video, analysis tools, learning tools etc.
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We aim to make retail participants become independent decision-makers to do so we are looking to expand our research and analytics division by incorporating artificial intelligence and machine learning. Also, we plan to build a community of like-minded people so that they can interact and learn from each other.
In the next 18 to 24 months, we plan to expand our roots in tier-2 & tier-3 cities as well as abroad. We aim to increase our current combined user base from 2 million to 10 million.
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 spoke to Vivek Bajaj, founder of stock market analytics platform STOCKEDGE and financial market learning portal ELEARNMARKETS. During the interaction, Bajaj spoke about the growth trajectory of his organisation and plan of action amid and beyond the pandemic.){kind=link}