Trading platform MarketWolf raises $10M in Series A

Fintech platform MarketWolf on Tuesday said it has raised $10 million in a Series A round led by Jungle Ventures and Dream Capital.

Existing investors such as iSeed, 9Unicorns, Crescent, and Riverwalk participated in the round as well. To date, MarketWolf has raised $17.4 million in external funding.

The Mumbai-based startup will use the capital raised to build its product suite and hire employees, it said.

"Retail participation in the stock market in India continues to remain abysmally low at 3-5 percent, and we believe that MarketWolf has the right product, as well as the right team and expertise to break through this market," said Arpit Beri, Principal at Jungle Ventures.

Founded in 2017 by Vishesh Dhingra and Thomas Joseph, MarketWolf's business model is predicated on the philosophy of making trading more accessible to new investors by cutting through jargon, ensuring protection against volatility via its in-built risk management system, and, at the same time, helping people learn about financial markets.

Vishesh tells YourStory that the aim of the platform is to help people make profits, or at least minimise the extent of losses. It encourages the use of its built-in risk management feature to perform a multitude of actions that can help prevent losses, such as setting mandatory target risk/reward levels, and investing only in liquid instruments, among others.

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"Any feature that gets added in the app has to pass the litmus test of contributing either towards increasing the chances of a trade making profits or minimising the chances of a trade incurring losses," Vishesh says.

The startup, like all other brokerages, earns its revenue from the fees it charges on trade execution. However, MarketWolf says it charges brokerage fees only on profitable trades; zero brokerage is charged if the trade ends up making a loss.

Users can currently invest in stocks, index ETFs and derivatives, currency derivatives, and commodity derivatives.

Vishesh says the platform will be adding more trading and investment options, as well as ways for people to learn about financial markets in a fun way.

The startup has opened over 500,000 trading accounts to date, nearly 90 percent in the 12 months. It has been downloaded by over 1.5 million users.

Its competitors in the space include TradingRooms by RAIN, Smallcase, and Paytm-based WealthBasket, among others.