Attracting New Clients is Closely Linked to Offering a High-Quality Product: Trivesh D, COO, Tradejini
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In this insightful interview with Mr. Trivesh D, COO of Tradejini, he explained how Tradejini has grown since its launch in 2012. Tradejini, a brokerage firm specialising in online stock trading for equities, commodities, derivatives, and currencies, stands out with its tech-driven platform, CubePlus, offering innovative features and solid security measures. Trivesh shares how the company adapts to market trends, maintains compliance, and utilises technology to enhance the user experience. Discover how Tradejiniâs growth strategies, commitment to customer service, and forward-thinking approach are shaping its future in finance and trading.
StartupTalky: How has Tradejini grown and evolved in the online brokerage industry since its launch?
Mr. Trivesh: Back in 2012, two seasoned veterans, Kishore and Dinesh, decided to start a broking firm solely driven by the passion to equip traders with all the tools necessary to make trading as streamlined as possible.
Tradejini and technology go hand in hand. We regularly try to inculcate cutting-edge technology in our products to modernize trading and investing. Our objective is to provide our clients with a strong, all-inclusive, tech-driven platform that ensures smooth and glitch-free transactions, with unrivalled speed and efficiency in trade execution.
Our state-of-the-art trading app, 'CubePlus', is a one-stop solution for traders of all styles. Since the launch last year, we have seen immense growth in all aspects. As part of âJiniversityâ, we also publish blogs and articles related to stock markets, personal finance, current affairs, and finance case studies.
Being a traditional, orthodox firm, we heavily relied on word of mouth and referrals as our go-to strategy, but given the influx of social media, we have also made big strides in terms of making our presence felt online. We have collaborated with leading financial influencers with a niche trading audience and have also partnered up with fellow traders and academies to bring more awareness to our product. We are present across all social media channels and our content focuses on demystifying the complicated trading world, which has seen immense appreciation from the trading community.
StartupTalky: What specific features or services make Tradejini's platform stand out from other discount brokerage firms?
Mr. Trivesh: We at Tradejini, have always focused on providing state-of-the-art features and services to empower our clients. CubePlus, our trading app, acts as a premium toolkit for traders by offering tools such as an inbuilt option chain, pay-off graph, scalper mode, basket mode, seasonality chart, 10-year fundamental and financial data, and option Greeks (within the option chain)âall under one roof and at no additional cost. Additionally, we also have a free dedicated options trading platform coupled with an options trading simulator and strategy builder, to name a few industry-first features.
These advanced tools are generally available for an additional fee but we offer them for free since we believe that these are the basic expectations of a client that we need to meet. Additionally, we boast ultra-quick order placement times of 50 ms, whereas the industry average for such transactions is around 70 ms to 90 ms. To support these kinds of speeds, we have a strong infrastructural architecture that is state-of-the-art, and capable of handling volumes up to 4 times our current volumes, which ensures that the platform is always stable and up to date with no/minimum glitches noticed by our clients.
Beyond this, we offer a glitch-free trading experience along with an active and well-trained customer support team that prioritizes untangling customer grievances and providing quick and easy assistance to our clients. All these factors help us get an edge over other players in the market.
StartupTalky: Can you discuss the measures Tradejini takes to ensure the security and privacy of its users' data?
Mr. Trivesh: We, at Tradejini, prioritize data security and user privacy with the utmost seriousness and take several essential steps to protect the financial and personal information of our clients.
We conduct regular audits by external vendors concerning our software and technology, along with regular internal audits to ensure all the systems are in place. We have recorded multiple clean external audits across exchanges and other regulatory bodies, which ensures our commitment to meeting all the compliances laid down by the regulatory bodies to the highest standard.
Furthermore, we have enabled two-factor authentication to verify the identity of our clients, vendors, and employees. A dedicated firewall and IP whitelisting on all office systems are put in place to ensure we reduce the risk of malware or any data compromises.
We strictly follow a No-Spam policy, guaranteeing that our sales team cannot access sensitive client data. To enhance security measures, our internal teams view private information, such as names, mobile numbers, and email addresses, in a masked form. As a self-funded, successful company, we do not participate in cross-selling or upselling our products. As a result, our clients' information is only utilized for its original intent and is never reused for different purposes.
StartupTalky: What is your market outlook for the brokerage industry in the next 5 years?
Mr. Trivesh: Indiaâs broking industry has experienced massive growth post-pandemic. According to reports, over 1.2 crore new demat accounts have opened since January 2024, showing a keen increase in investing in the stock market. India is one of the fastest-growing economies in the world, which offers promising growth potential. With the current penetration in the capital markets in single digits, this signals massive under-penetration and the scope of a lot more people joining the stock markets in the coming years. Over the next five years, Indiaâs brokerage industry is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 15%, driven by a surge in digital trading and an expanding retail investor base.
With over 160 million retail investors and the market projected to add 15-20 million new investors annually, we see a fruitful future for the Indian capital markets. With such high numbers of investors pouring in, stock brokers must be ready to capitalize on this influx.
Being innovative and adaptive is key to ensuring the longevity and competitiveness of brokerages in the market. Technological advancements, regulatory changes, and a focus on personalized services will shape the industryâs future, making it a dynamic and promising sector in Indiaâs financial landscape.
Tripti Agarwal
StartupTalky: How has your financial experience influenced Tradejini's strategies?
Mr. Trivesh: Our bread and butter are numbers. With numbers comes the authenticity of data and informed decision-making. Tradejini has relied on these principles of taking every decision that is backed by concrete numbers, to generate profits on every expenditure we do.
The other thing that experience has taught us is that frugality is the way forward. Frugality has been the cornerstone of Tradejini's growth over the last 12 years and fortunately, it has been net profitable in all of these years without the need for external funding. The ability to read and infer financial statements in depth has helped the company make much better investment decisions and manage its working capital much better.
StartupTalky: What innovative technologies has Tradejini implemented to enhance user experience and operational efficiency?
Mr. Trivesh: We have a feature called Tring, which alerts users to any surveillance measures on the stocks, or any ban list on the stocks. The client gets an alert from our team when the position is open and not squared off by EOD. We proactively keep in touch with the clients to ensure their positions are maintained with adequate margins and that they are aware of the potential losses.
Additionally, we have an automated system, to reach out to all our customers, concerning new product features, statutory information, and real-time alerts. Our customer engagement and experience are a combination of technology, AI-based communications, and human touch for any trading-related information and queries. We have built the brand on one key pillar, which is that - the human touch at Tradejini never dies. Our customers have stuck with us for over a decade only because of our customer support and how quickly and proactively we can resolve their queries and provide solutions at the earliest.
We have also integrated with a state-of-the-art options trading platform that assists traders in simulations of their strategies, strategy building, alert tracking, and many more features.
StartupTalky: Can you elaborate on the key features and benefits of the "CubePlus for Tradejini" mobile application?
Mr. Trivesh: CubePlus is our flagship product, which offers traders an arsenal of tools that help enhance their trading and investing experiences. We provide our users with a centralized hub for relevant data and analytics, providing a holistic view of market trends. What makes CubePlus the preferred platform? It's a platform built by traders, for traders. Our product goes through a rigorous amount of testing and feedback loop by real-life traders, who give us valuable feedback and insights into the requirements of the market, and our job as a product-first company is to constantly work on these requirements to make our product better. CubePlus has been the culmination of a joint effort of our product team and feedback from the trading community, making it a reliable, fast, and trusted platform for active traders.
We offer premium features such as Scalper mode, seasonality chart, basket mode, order slicing, and predefined index watchlists, which greatly help in making better trading and investing decisions. We do not charge any additional costs for these features.
Moreover, clients get access to 10-year financial data, including income statements, corporate actions, shareholding patterns, and audit reports, all within the same interface. We have also tied up large options execution strategy building platforms and algo-trading platforms, which let our trading clients integrate their custom algorithms that complement their desired trading style.
Our UI is also designed in a way to reduce the number of clicks needed to perform any desired action. The average trade settlement time in CubePlus is around 50 ms, which is quicker than the industry average of around 80 ms. Additionally, CubePlus will undergo significant updates every month, introducing industry-first features such as advanced charting, strategy-building tools, heatmaps, advanced option chain analysis, mutual fund integration, and much more.
All these features ensure a more intuitive and efficient trading experience.
StartupTalky: How do your referral program and educational resources benefit Tradejini?
Mr. Trivesh: Being a bootstrapped company, we could not afford the kind of marketing spending done by the industry. In our 12+ years of journey, we have completely relied on referrals and word of mouth to get us to the state we are in today. We have a very active and rewarding Referral Program. Our referral program is built to provide a steady passive income stream for existing clients by referring acquaintances, friends, and family members. Under this program, a client who is referring to another individual is receiving a certain percentage of the brokerage paid by the referred client on a perpetual basis. This benefit comes with a âno strings attached policyâ. This has proven to be quite successful and has helped grow our customer base while also rewarding those clients who helped us in our growth journey.
âJiniversityâ, our initiative towards demystifying the complexity of the financial world, is aimed at building financial educational resources. It is a place where we regularly publish articles related to personal finance, current affairs, financial case studies, and other interesting topics. We provide them for free on our website, which we plan on expanding into a certified course for youngsters interested in mastering their wealth management, including educational articles from basics to advanced regarding all things investing and trading. The aim is to provide quality content regarding common but crucial topics relating to finance that is engaging, easy to read and understand, and provides a strong foundation for the basics of the finance world.
StartupTalky: What trends and opportunities do you see in small and mid-cap stock trading?
Mr. Trivesh: Currently, we feel that the small-cap and mid-cap stocks are overvalued and are trading at much higher prices. With the quarterly results on the horizon, it might prove to be a good start for the necessary corrections. If the results beat market expectations, the P/E ratio is expected to drop, and the valuation of small-cap and mid-cap stocks will be closer to their fair value, making them attractive.
Potentially, the opportunities in small-cap and mid-cap lie in technological innovations, which are a high-risk, high-reward bet. Besides that, any small-cap and mid-cap companies that have a differentiating product or service that is disruptive to the market might make big moves in terms of their share prices.
Ria Sahni
StartupTalky: How does Tradejini stay updated and compliant with SEBI regulations, especially regarding IPOs and extended trading hours?
Mr. Trivesh: We provide a tech-driven platform for traders and investors to participate in the capital market. SEBI regulations and changes are sent across as notifications to all stock brokers. Any changes, be it regarding IPOs or extended trading hours, are usually tested multiple times before being finalized. Once we have the green light to implement these changes, we begin planning our approach towards these changes, which generally include technology, infrastructure, and manpower upgrades, among others.
We ensure that we are well informed regarding any changes in SEBI regulations and compliance and try our best to adapt to them as quickly as possible so that our clients can understand and enjoy the benefits of the new regulations and features.
Being a tech broker, our readiness for any regulatory change is a function of building better tech and more automation in our backend to ensure we remain competitive in the market and avoid overstaffing while maintaining all the required checks and balances.
StartupTalky: How is Tradejini adapting to policies around financial influencers?
Mr. Trivesh: Tradejini is well aware of the unethical actionsâlike pushing clickbait, disseminating false information, and voicing biased stock opinionsâthat are linked to certain financial influencers. The company is adamantly against these strategies and is dedicated to making sure that any alliances or partnerships with financial influencers uphold strict standards of objectivity, offering their audience only trustworthy and instructive content.
Tradejini places a strong emphasis on scrupulous adherence to legal requirements and ethical principles to adjust to the changing policies regarding financial influencers. By the guidelines established by SEBI and the Advertising Standards Council of India (ASCI), the organization collaborates with influencers who provide reliable, understandable, and accurate financial information.
As a response to the recent SEBI consultation paper on financial influencer regulation, Tradejini is committed to upholding transparency and avoiding collaborations with parties that mislead or make inflated claims. This pledge upholds investor protection and encourages prudent financial education, making certain that all offered content is trustworthy and helpful to the target audience.
StartupTalky: Why is real-time settlement important, and how does Tradejini facilitate it?
Mr. Trivesh: Quick and efficient settlement of investments and trades is crucial to maintaining liquidity. Any changes regarding this have to be tested before being in place. As of now, there has been very little development regarding real-time trade settlement and we await a modality and P.O.A regarding this from the market regulator. Currently, brokers don't need to provide such a facility to their clients. Once we have the necessary direction from the exchange, we will test it internally and roll it out in the next update.
Currently, we are offering an ASBA (Application Supported by Blocked Amount) settlement, which involves authorization to block the application money in our clientâs bank account for subscribing to an IPO issue. During this period, the blocked amount cannot be used for any other purpose.
StartupTalky: What strategies does Tradejini use to attract and retain customers?
Mr. Trivesh: Our strategy revolves around exceptional customer service and a stable technological foundation. Our average customer retention period of nearly 5 years is a testament to the quality of service we provide and the reliability of our execution platform.
In addition, we are launching new platforms that support execution for traders, promote financial literacy, and aid decision-making. These platforms include tools like an options trading platform, a screener, educational content, newsletters, and a community for investors and traders.
Attracting new clients is closely linked to offering a high-quality product. Our focus is on making our advanced platform, CubePlus, more accessible to a broader audience. Our growth has been driven mainly by referrals and word of mouth which we believe will continue to be effective in attracting new clients. We are also looking at performance marketing and offline & online trading events across the country to build awareness about the new feature on CubePlus. We have already concluded events in 8 different cities covering the breadth of the country. We are now looking at conducting more offline events in Tier II and III cities to build awareness and educate the audience in these cities.
Marlene Ann Anthony
StartupTalky: Can you share some insights or trends on AI in finance and its impact on the broking industry?
Mr. Trivesh: In recent years, artificial intelligence has advanced significantly in all fields. In finance, AI technologies are expected to improve trading algorithm accuracy by up to 40% while lowering operational costs by 25% over the next five years.
Enhanced predictive models and real-time data analysis allow brokerages to provide highly personalized services and automated trading strategies. As AI adoption grows, these innovations will gain a competitive advantage by improving trading efficiency and client engagement in the rapidly changing broking industry.
As of now, we are using AI in our customer support function, where the responses to clients can be generated through a bot that uses our detailed FAQâs as the underlying data set to respond to clients natively in their vernacular language. This is available both on chat and voice bot, which is a completely new development for a stockbroker.
Concerning our core operations, we do not have any AI-driven functions yet. However, we are working on building custom reports with AI insights for our clients in the coming two quarters. We have a deep tie-up with Trading View â our charting partner, to show real-time charts along with thousands of indicators on the charts.
StartupTalky: What are Tradejiniâs future goals and plans and how do you envision the company evolving over the next few years?
Mr. Trivesh: Our objective has always been to help traders and investors by offering access to cutting-edge technologies that improve and streamline the trading process. We are devoted to constantly developing the user interface of our platform to increase speed, efficiency, and overall user experience. In the following years, we plan to integrate sophisticated features and technologies to make our platform even more powerful and user-friendly.
We are also planning to ramp up our marketing efforts in the future. This includes reaching out to more potential customers through targeted advertising, strategic partnerships, and increased visibility. In the next 3 years, we expect to be the preferred choice of broker for an active trader, completely relying on our product superiority. By expanding our customer base and strengthening our brand presence, we hope to serve a larger community of traders and investors, providing them with the resources and tools they need to succeed in the ever-changing financial landscape.
StartupTalky: What advice would you give to young entrepreneurs and professionals who aspire to enter the finance and stock trading industry?
Mr. Trivesh: We recommend young entrepreneurs and professionals who aspire to enter the finance and stock trading industry go through it step by step, starting with mutual funds, moving on to equities, then equity trading, and finally futures and options. This is a more structured and calculated process that protects the user from the wrath of futures and options and the unrealistic expectations that come with them.
If you are looking at building a business in the capital market industry, we suggest a strong focus on building strong relationships and trust with your clients, which will lead to long-term brand loyalty. It is also crucial to be alert and update yourself with market trends and regulations to offer valuable insights and advice. Do not aim for overnight success, since building a brand is a marathon, not a sprint.
Lastly, meeting client needs should be a top priority, for which one should develop a strong understanding of financial products and services. Hopefully, these recommendations will help young entrepreneurs and professionals achieve success in the finance and stock trading industries.
Alan Joseph
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