Investment Advisory Startup StockGro Bags INR 150 Cr From Mukul Agrawal

Investment advisory startup StockGro has raised INR 150 Cr ($16.7 Mn) in a Series B funding round led by Param Capital founder Mukul Agrawal. The latest round involves the issuance of convertible notes. These notes would be initially structured as debt instruments and would be liable to convert into equity shares after an agreed period of time. 

The startup plans to utilise the fresh capital to expand its geographical presence, strengthen its stock market AI research platform Stoxo, add new product features and offerings across multiple asset classes.

“With this round, and with products like Stoxo at the core of our journey, we’re doubling down on making investors genuinely smarter and more confident about the decisions they take in the markets,” StockGro’s founder and CEO Ajay Lakhotia said. 

Founded in 2020, StockGro is an social investment and educational app that helps users, especially beginners, get a better understanding about stock market trading and investments.

The app is built around a hybrid model that blends edtech and fintech. Some of the core features offered by StockGro include:

• Social & Community Platform: For more experienced market investors, the platform allows users to directly follow portfolio advice of SEBI-registered research analysts and experts. Further, investors can discuss and validate investment ideas with a large community of traders.
• Stoxo: The startup’s AI companion, Stoxo, provides retail investors with real-time stock market intelligence. Pursuant to this, users can ask questions to the bot to get more well-researched answers, eliminating the need for investors to sift through multiple sources.

Important to note that StockGro operates on a freemium model. Its premium offering, StockGro Plus, is a subscription service that offers users access to advanced trading tools, more trade calls, and exclusive content/interactive features to enhance their decision-making.

However, earlier the startup also offered virtual trading where users received large amount of virtual money (paper money) to trade in stocks and F&Os and StockGro also conducted inter-collegiate trading competitions where users build the most profitable virtual portfolio and can win real money rewards or prizes. 

The startup began its journey as an invite-only platform with about 400 users. Initially, StockGro reached out directly to business schools across India, inviting students to participate in intra-school and inter-school competitions held on the platform. 

The strategy helped the startup acquire about 1 Lakh users within the first year of its launch despite being an invite-only platform. Subsequently, the app was launched on the app stores to heightened user demand, quickly achieving the coveted 1 Mn user mark in the first quarter of 2021.

As of now, the app has scaled to serve more than 35 Mn users and has collaborated with over 1,500 educational institutions across India.

The fresh investment comes at a time when the Indian equities market has been soaring at fresh all-time highs, leading to an increasing investor interest in securities. Data from depositories show the total number of demat accounts has surged nearly fourfold since early 2020, recently crossing 20 Cr nationwide. This dramatic growth is fueled by improving market performance as well as an increase in adoption of discount brokerage platforms.

This heightened interest is best demonstrated by the consistently rising inflow into mutual funds via Systematic Investment Plans (SIPs), which is the preferred route for retail investors. Monthly SIP contributions have repeatedly hit record highs, recently approaching INR 30,000 Cr, marking a year-on-year growth of over 20%.