Stock market tech startup Market Pulse is helping traders make informed decisions

Stock markets can be a bewildering place as there is always uncertainty, and one is not sure which way it will swing. There is also a constant worry whether one’s investment will be safe.

Mumbai-based startup MarketPulse has been making consistent efforts over the years to provide tools to ordinary investors to generate sustained income through stock market trading.

According to Amit Dhakad and Hiral Jain, co-founders, Market Pulse, they realised there was clearly a lack of access in terms of information, knowledge or tools for ordinary investors to enable a sustainable business in the stock market.

“Our vision is to assist those people who enter the market and help them thrive in this business,” says Amit.

Amit, a techie, never thought that he would be part of the financial sector, but got into it as he helped his father in the commodities market in creating certain technology tools. In this process, he met his co-founder Hiral Jain and started Market Pulse in 2016.

Lack of information

According to Amit, there was clearly a lack of access to information or tools, which could help the traders navigate through the commodities market.

Bootstrapped with an investment of $10,000, Market Pulse built various tools for traders in the commodities market.

The startup built up sizeable traction in the commodities market but the real action for Market Pulse came when it got into the stock markets in January, 2018.

“We wanted to build something for the masses as well as make it affordable,” says Amit.

The startup was very clear that its technology interface for the investor will only be on the smartphone as it was the most accessible device for the retail investor anytime, anywhere.

Amit claims there are very few stock market tools which are designed purely for a smartphone application as most of them are web versions.

Decision making tools

Given its entry into the stock market, Market Pulse has built a variety of tools for retail investors like real-time tracking, high quality technical charts, price-volume movement, alerts, etc.

As of now, the startup only caters to the derivatives segment of the stock market. “Our tools help retail investors in decision making and simplifies things,” says Amit.

He further explains that given the fluctuations in the stock markets, it can make things difficult for the retail investor. The aim of the startup is to ensure the investors who come into this segment will continue to remain while making sustainable profits.

Market Pulse is only available as an app and claims to have witnessed over 20 lakh downloads, while the active traders on its platform, which includes both commodities and stock market, stands at 5.5 lakh.

All this growth for Market Pulse has come with zero marketing. Amit says, “We are only focussed on solving the real problems that investors face.”

Profitable business model

Speaking about the business model, Amit says that 99 percent of its users are getting the services for free, and only one percent pay for certain advanced products. The revenue comes through advertisements and subscription.

“We are profitable despite majority of the users using our services for free. Our focus has always been on creating quality products with strong business viability,” says Amit.

The user base for Market Pulse has been doubling every year organically while its revenue has grown by 3.5x last year.

In the month of September this year, Market Pulse announced pre-series A funding round of $750,000, which was led by a group of HNI investors.

While the startup mostly competes with brokerage houses and other startups in the space, Amit says, “We face this question from others every year, but actually we are thriving. Inside Market Pulse we rarely talk about competition and it is only about how we further help our users.”

The co-founder of Market Pulse very confidently says it is the only company which builds everything in-house. “Our differentiation is that we are a tech company which is providing tools to help people in the stock markets.”

Plans ahead

As part of its future plans, Market Pulse is looking to build some kind of educational product for its users who can use it for developing the right kind of skills to sustain in the stock markets. It is also looking to onboard the stock market brokers on its platform as it would complete the cycle of a retail user of picking a stock and placing the order. Currently, it does not have the facility for the investor to buy or sell a stock.

“The vision we have will take a decade to realise. Markets are complex and so are human emotions, and we provide those set of tools, which can build confident traders or investors,” says Amit.