Investment portal Tauro Wealth raises seed funding

Bangalore-based Tauro Investment Advisors Pvt Ltd, which operates online stock market investment platform Tauro Wealth, has secured seed funding from TracxnLabs and a bunch of unnamed angel investors.

The startup will use the money raised to build its web platform and expand the technology team, it said in a statement.

The company is looking to close its pre-Series A round of funding by May and will use the funds to provide online transactions and customer support.

Currently in beta mode and a web only platform, Tauro Wealth has 120 registered users and is expected to go live in a month's time. Users can choose from a range of portfolios created by the company and buy equity mutual funds, equity-linked savings schemes (ELSS), unit-linked insurance plans (ULIP) and direct equity. The startup will soon tie-up with leading brokers and start integrating transactions on its platform.

An Android version of the platform will be rolled out soon.

Tauro was founded in 2015 by IIT Kanpur alumni Harsh Vardhan Singh and Anand Vivek Srivastava. Singh spent the early years of his career as co-founder of a technology start-up that developed a SaaS product for the recruitment industry, with sizable components of machine learning. He went on to join Deutsche Bank before founding Tauro Wealth. Srivastava has earlier worked on large complex systems (synthesis compiler) at Mentor Graphics and Guavus Network Systems.

"The lack of such a resource is why many people consider investing in stock markets similar to gambling in a casino. And I feel quite strongly that technology can bridge this wide gap between investors and the stock market," said Harsh Vardhan Singh, co-founder of Tauro Wealth.

According to Singh, retail investors currently invest $200 billion in stock markets, but the number of active investors account for less than 2 per cent of the total population.

Tauro Wealth competes with Bangalore-based Scripbox.Com India Pvt Ltd, which runs online fintech portal Scripbox. In August last year, Scripbox raised Rs 16 crore ($2.49 million) in its Series A round of funding from Accel Partners and a group of angel investors.