On a winning Streak: how Jayalakshmi Manohar’s second startup aims at financial inclusion for both traders and investors

At 26, Jayalakshmi Manohar is already blazing trails with her second startup, Streak. She founded her first one, TrialKart, in 2015 which got acquired in just six months of its existence by online marketplace Voonik in August 2015.

Jayalakshmi worked for six months as a software engineer and quit because she says she knew it wasn’t what she wanted to do.

While most of us were contemplating higher studies, campus placements, and the job scenario, at 20, Jayalakshmi was already into self-discovery mode.

“My journey began when I was 20 years old while I was still pursuing my engineering degree. A mobile technology product that I co-invented was funded by the Department of Science and Technology (DST) and that’s when I got hooked. But the real learning came three years later after I quit my first corporate job and started the entrepreneurial journey with my co-founders.”

Her love for building new products, solving UI/UX problems, identifying market gaps, and studying user behaviour led her to start Streak with co-founders Harsha Manohar and Vipul Divyanshu.

Towards better financial inclusion

“We started Streak in 2017 after realising that in a country with a population of 1.2 billion and household savings ratios being one of the world's highest at 30 percent, the retail participation in the stock markets was a feeble two percent. We were determined to bring about financial inclusion in this niche market by providing state-of-the-art technology to retail traders and investors, in a simple user-friendly way at affordable prices. Streak has partnered with India's largest broker and has acquired over 130,000 users, who have run 10 million back tests and have generated transacted value of $250 million so far,” she says.

Elaborating on Streak and what it does, Jayalakshmi adds,

“Nearly 90 percent of retail traders lose money in the stock market, Streak was envisioned to bring financial inclusion by providing a platform to help traders and investors calculate their risks before taking a position in the market. We believe that everyone should be able to wield technology while investing, which was so far only accessible to institutional investors, HNIs and hedge funds. With Streak, anyone can create, back test and deploy trading strategies live in the stock market, without coding.”

Streak helps in three ways – with a simple and intuitive interface, one can create trading strategies with over 70 technical indicators for any security, without coding; it can validate your strategy by back testing on historical market data and generate performance metrics such as maximum drawdown, winning or losing streak, etc; and tracking strategies once it is deployed live in the market.

Simply put, Streak claims to be one of the first few platforms in the world where traders can create algorithms to generate trading signals for buying or selling stocks without the need for coding.

Working in male-dominated spheres

With trading and stock markets a highly male dominated sector in India, does she face any gender bias? Jayalakshmi says it’s a mixed bag.

“Our business does lie in an intersection of multiple male-dominated spheres: stock markets, technology, entrepreneurship. It therefore results in all my interactions/meetings being male-dominated, for example, it could be customers, stock market veterans, investors, team members, and the like. I haven't had any negative experience in the ecosystem. While hiring in this space, I find that 99 percent of the applicants are male. Due to no fault of their own, they are often surprised to hear a woman's voice on the other end. Although most of them get past it in the first few minutes, some don’t, and that makes my choice easier.

However, she is happy that traditional mindsets are changing every day. “In every industry women are challenging themselves and making a mark in their own unique way. In my own small circles, I can see the difference in people's mindsets as compared to earlier where people are more accepting and more open to entrepreneurship as a career path. But yes, women do have to put in more effort and prove themselves by working harder.” 

Highs as an entrepreneur

Jayalakshmi’s six-year entrepreneurial journey has seen many highs. “My first startup getting acquired, raising seed funding for Streak, partnering with the largest stock broker in India, acquiring our first 100,000 users, becoming part of TECH30 2018, achieving break-even revenues and, finally, receiving HerStory’s Women on A Mission Award in the Emerging Tech Entrepreneur category has made my journey so far really memorable,” she says.

On her entrepreneurial plans, she adds,

“Streak's journey has just begun and its technology and platform have been built in a way that is easily scalable and extendible to any asset class, in various markets/exchanges around the world. Taking Streak global and making it accessible to everyone is the primary focus.”

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