How Heckyl Technologies is Demystifying Stock Market For Indian & International Investors
Today they service 14 clients, collect information from over 1.5 million sources and are on their way to international expansion. Heckyl Technologies from Mumbai is among our TechSparks winners from 2011, who has cemented our faith in them as a promising technology startup and reposed the market’s confidence in their product. Heckyl offers a number of products that can help the stock trading community make informed decisions about their investments in the stock market. “We are a non-broking trading entity connecting you to the retail trading community,” says Mukund Mudras, co-founder, Heckyl Technologies.
So lets say you want to invest in an XYZ company stock, of a company that is relatively small, but very promising and growing well. But as a retail investor you are not sure about the business fundamentals, their long term plans and are therefore little skeptical of putting your money. Now if you are a customer with any trading house like India Infoline, Motilal Oswal or Religare, then you have access to all the information about that XYZ company and can read up about them thoroughly before you invest in their shares -- thanks to Heckyl. Heckyl gives you real time information on a dashboard about a particular company, which you can use to make informed decisions.
Mukund agrees it is not something that clients would have thought of using to make their decisions. “But once people start using it, they see the value they get out of the system. Our system is very inclusive and helps build a retail base and reduces the gap between brokerage and retail,” emphasizes Mukund. Heckyl wants to be a product which common retail users of the stock market find a lot of value in using. While brokerages, FIIs, fund managers and banks are potential customers, the Heckyl team is keen on helping retail customers make informed trading decisions.
Heckyl sources its information from the internet and looks at different news sites, blogs, forums, etc which put out information about a company, and then collates it all to be made available on a single platform. The other players who have a solution similar to what Heckyl has to offer are Bloomberg and Thomson Reuters, which come at very high costs compared to the Heckyl solution. They already have two products being used by their clients and will be releasing their third product in the next quarter. Heckyl has received a $1 million funding from Seedfund and is cash flow positive today.
We asked Mukund, what difference did TechSparks participation make to their lives, and this is what he had to say, “TechSparks provided us a platform to reach out to the large community of like-minded people and not to mention the easy access it provided to VCs.”
Meet The Team
The Heckyl founding team comprises of Mukund Mudras, Som Sagar, Abhijit Vedak and Jaison Mathews. All of them were working in Merrill Lynch earlier in the fixed income group. Mukund calls Som the ‘daredevil’ who took the plunge first, the rest of the team followed later, Mukund himself was the last to join.
Abhijit is responsible for the internal operations, system infrastructure and finance part of the business. When we asked him how they decided to develop a financial product, he credits Som about the decision. “Som was good at finance and understood the area, so we all just went along in his belief,” says Abhijit. Abhijit is a database and design expert who decided to join his friends, because the “independence to do good work, where you have the satisfaction of making a difference in the consumers life was a more exciting preposition,” he says.
Madhusudhan is the youngest member of the Heckyl team and is an IIT Guwahati graduate. He takes care of UI development at Heckyl and this is his second job after graduation. Madhu, as he is called, joined Heckyl because he was not happy with the corporate setup he was in earlier. “There were too many people to do the same job and most of it was fixed and pre planned, there was no scope for improvisation,” explains Madhu. However at Heckyl, he says life is more play than work. He gets a free hand to implement what he likes, he likes the variety of work he gets to do at the startup and he considers his colleagues as an extended family, which helps. “I can do what I want, when I want to, here. There is a lot of work, but at the same time, there is lot of play in the team as well,” says Madhu.
Ashish Saharia joined Heckyl in February 2012 and helps the startup with data mining. Ashish has always worked with startups because he likes the challenge they offer to do something new. “I was in my previous job for almost 10 years and when the Heckyl opportunity came by, I was not very sure I wanted to move. But then the opportunity to create something new from scratch is a big attraction,” and Ashish crossed over to join Heckyl.
Ashish Mandavkar is one of the oldest members of the Heckyl team, who joined them in June 2011. Ashish M was earlier in Bank of America and now helps Heckyl manage the database design and development. He is also known as the patient man around. “You will never see Ashish M getting angry. You may find him with his hands on his forehead, and that’s because Ashish S always forgets the various financial nuances that Ashish M explains to him and he has to do it over and over again. But despite that you will never find Ashish M angry,” says Abhijit very fondly.
Whether it is a patient person like Ashish M or a fresher like Madhu, the Heckyl team today has been put together after months of review. Mukund says they do not have a firing policy and because of that they are extremely cautious about the people they take onboard.
The company is on its way to Singapore and is also looking to setup base in the UK. While the market opportunity is large, Mukund understands the various challenges entering a new market poses for them. But with a strong foundation back home, this TechSpark winner from Mumbai is confident of conquering new frontiers.
We wish Heckyl all the best for the future and hope they continue to grow from strength to strength.
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