The last two to three years have seen increasingly more retail investors attempting to build their wealth in the stock markets. But once they attempt to invest, they are confounded with a huge learning curve, conflicting opinions, and find themselves lacking the confidence to manage their own money. Even sophisticated investors lack clarity on what a long-term process to investing might look like. Realising this, in late 2021, Aakash Goel and Mohit Chitlangia came up with Investmint, a DIY trading app to enable retail investors to leverage data backed ideas and participate in equity and various other publicly exchange traded asset classes.
“We focus on active investors who have seen the stock markets and know the ‘how’ of the trading world. They miss the ‘what’ and ‘when’ of the trades, which gets solved by following the signals that come from our models they subscribe to,” says Investmint co-founder & CEO Goel.
Investmint’s roots lie in ‘SignalX’, an indie hobby project started in early 2021 by Goel. This was a DIY open source option trading tool meant to systematically trade in Nifty and BankNifty options. SignalX was a freemium product that ended up generating revenues upwards of `2.5 lakh per month with over 100 paying customers within four months of operations.
All the models on Investmint are run by individual SEBI registered analysts, for whom it provides back testing, simulation and validation services. Investmint enables retail investors to trade using “Signals” with the help of fully quantitative and data backed investing techniques (or ideas). Each such technique is a called a “Model” which is effectively a collection of rules that determine what to buy, when to buy it, and when to sell it.
Investmint is available as a mobile app on both iOS App Store and Google Play Stores. Users sign up with just a phone number without any KYC requirements. The app bundles various systematic models—from short term trading signals to various quantitatively made trading basket signals. Users subscribe to models and receive push notifications on the app when new signals arrive. All they’ve got to do is participate.
The app also allows users to paper trade and monitor model performance and its signals before they start trading with real money with their brokers. As of now, all models are available for free as part of Free Early Access of the platform, but in the long-term it is looking at a ‘Freemium’ model with subscription tiers.
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“Going ahead, we plan to have models that allow scientific participation in commodities and various other publicly exchange traded asset classes,” says Goel. “The plan for the coming year is to on-board 250,000 active users on the platform and introduce more efficient and better performing quantitative models for the retail investors, as well as make the in-app trading experience extremely seamless. ”
Says Mohit Chitlangia, co-founder and COO, Investmint: “Our interaction with DIY investors tells three aspects of the current generation of investors. One, they are much savvy and expect more nuanced and alpha-generating strategies. Two, they are open to exploring novel data-validated, academically proven investing ideas. Three, they want to have a sense of control over their investments by being more involved.”
Investmint has recently raised $2 million from Nexus Venture Partners, AngelList India and a few angel investors.
Minting money
* In late 2021, Aakash Goel and Mohit Chitlangia came up with Investmint, a DIY trading app
* This app enables retail investors to trade using ‘Signals’ with the help of fully quantitative and data backed investing techniques
* It has recently raised $2 million from Nexus Venture Partners, AngelList India