Former Fosun RZ partner founded social investment platform StockGro raises angel round

StockGro, a social investment platform, has raised Rs 6 crore ($814,510 as per current exchange rates) from a group of angel investors, including Bounce co-founder and CEO Vivekananda Hallekere, Moglix founder Rahul Garg and Livspace co-founder Ramakant Sharma. 

Varun Laul of private equity firm Investcorp, and angel investor Abhishek Nag also participated in the round.

AssetGro Fintech, the company that owns and operates StockGro, is also in talks to raise a $3 million seed round from institutional investors, founder Ajay Lakhotia confirmed exclusively to TechCircle. 

Prior to StockGro, Lakhotia was a partner at venture capital firm Fosun RZ Capital.

“It is good to back a company founded by a former venture capitalist as they are aware of the challenges and pitfalls, and are very calibrated between growth and capital efficiency. My investment in StockGro is not only a market penetration opportunity, but also about the potential creation and education of a new investor class,” investor Varun LauI told TechCircle. 

Laul, formerly with Providence Equity and Zodius Capital, has backed companies such as lifestyle content platform Trell, health content company myUpchar and personal care brand mCaffeine as an angel investor. 

Founded in January 2020, StockGro started with a focus on students in business schools across India. 

The students build their portfolio of stocks and compete in leagues against peers by trading in real time. The platform provides both free and paid leagues for users to participate and build their trading and investment Strategy. Best performing trading strategies win the designated award money and the winners start gaining followers, socialising their investment strategies and thesis.

StockGro now has fund managers, F&O traders and algo traders driving their social groups, helping users learn various trading strategies and test their thesis on StockGro platform.

The platform also has other retail investors joining in. “We have a presence across 40 business schools including Indian Institute of Management, Indian School of Business and are in talks to launch it in London School of Business and National University of Singapore,” Lakhotia said. 

He added that the platform will look at soon integrating data from London Stock Exchange and Nasdaq. 

The company is also in talks with investment platforms such as Groww and Paytm Money to earn revenue from its partnership with brokerages. 

Abhishek Nag, who participated in the current round, cites the success of companies such as Israel based social trading and multi-asset brokerage company eToro for backing StockGro. 

“...in India people do not invest in stocks due to trust-deficit and low understanding of the markets,” he said. Nag successfully exited mobile fantasy esports platform Mobile Premier League in November. He also wrote an early cheque for apartment security platform MyGate which he exited in 2019 following a funding round led by Tiger Global Management and Tencent.