Talkoot is a real-time social platform for investors and traders. The venture aims to make financial markets fun, open and accessible to everyone in the country. Talkoot creates a personalized financial feed for each user based on the stocks and people they follow. Talkoot algorithms constantly measure performance of each idea shared on the platform and push out ideas that have high winning potential to the relevant users. Users can discuss and debate individual ideas’ merit collectively and make better and informed investment decisions. All this is done through a transparent, collaborative and easy-to-use app that takes the sting out of investing.
“Indian stock market has returned more than 13% annually during the 21st century. Despite this, most Indians do not invest because investing is considered difficult, risky and for the brave. The reason is primarily lack of awareness, incomprehensible volatility and difficulty in identifying good investment opportunities. With Talkoot, we aim to solve just that – through a platform that connects millions of investors together and helps them make better investments collaboratively,” said Mr Saumitra Agarwal, Founder of Talkoot.
Talkoot has raised a round of funding from angel investors from Google and Deutsche Bank who will join as advisors to the company to further mentor and nurture the team.
Praveen Visesh, Director, FX trading at Deutsche Bank and an early investor in Talkoot said, “I am a professional trader. I often use LinkedIn to connect with my professional network, Twitter to follow news, Quora to find answers and Tripoto to plan my vacation. However, I miss having a network where I can discuss market movements, interesting trading ideas, and news, as they happen. We all have a need to connect with experts, understand their perspective, and discuss ideas before investing. I was really impressed by the vision of the company, and enthusiasm of the Talkoot team when I made my investment decision.”
“In a country of 730M adults, we have less than 25 million registered Demat accounts today. That’s less than 4% of investors as compared to the US where 48% of adults are invested in stocks. India is on cusp of explosive growth, and we at Talkoot believe that India will attain parity with global markets within the next decade. This will be driven by an increase in disposable income and government initiatives for financial inclusion. We have created Talkoot to act as a catalyst, that lets people access financial information, ideas and advice in a fun, collaborative and intuitive way. This enables well-informed decisions on investments made with hard earned money. We have already enrolled more than 1,000 customers and advisors to join us at the launch,” said Chakradhar Gade, Head of Business Development at Talkoot. “With this investment, we intend to enroll 100,000 more customers and 1,000 advisors by the end of this financial year,” he added.
About Talkoot Technologies
Founded in October 2015, the idea of Talkoot was born when stock markets worldwide suffered a sharp setback due to a meltdown in the Chinese markets. Saumitra was then working in Microsoft as a Program Manager for their mobile only initiatives. He woke up to frantic phone calls and WhatsApp messages from his friends who looked at him as a seasoned investor and trader. This triggered the idea of having a platform that enables a steady flow of real-time and accurate information. In its absence, investors are being driven to arbitrarily formed WhatsApp groups, forums, message boards and sometimes even bogus advisors that dupe them of hard-earned money.
Early stage startups such as ClosingBell, Vetr, Investfeed and late stage startups like StockTwits and eToro are pursuing similar ideas in the US. Talkoot aims to build an international presence competing with such firms after firmly establishing itself in India. The current investment round will primarily be utilized towards team building, technology infrastructure and user acquisition for Talkoot’s web and mobile apps.
Talkoot’s website and Android app help users discover stocks and news trending around them. It also connects users to community leaders, and advisors with good returns over time. Users can register on the platform at http://www.talkoot.in for early access.