iVes

Group No: A
Section: A
 DECLARATION

We hereby declare that this submission is our own work and that, to the best of
our knowledge and belief, it contains no material previously published in the
print / online form or written by another person, nor material which has been
part of other projects, except where due acknowledgement has been made in
the text.

Place:

Date:

SL No Name Roll No Email ID

ankana13a@iimk
1 Ankana Hazra EPGP-13A-017 .edu.in
anoop13a@iimk.
2 Anoop Kumar Saxena EPGP-13A-020 edu.in
avinashk13a@ii
3 Avinash Kumar EPGP-13A-029 mk.edu.in
gaurab13a@iimk
4 Gaurab Dawn EPGP-13A-044 .edu.in
kaushiki13a@iim
5 Kaushiki Biswas EPGP-13A-060 k.edu.in
sujeet13a@iimk.
6 Sujeet Kumar EPGP-13A-111 edu.in
tanuj13a@iimk.e
7 Tanuj Chawla EPGP-13A-116 du.in
philip13a@iimk.
8 Philip Desmond Placid EPGP-13A-078 edu.in

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 CERTIFICATE

This is to certify that the Business Plan Project entitled “

Submitted by GROUP 17 to Indian Institute of Management Kozhikode is a

bonafide record of the work carried out by them under my supervision and
guidance.

Date:

Signature:

Faculty Mentor: -

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Table of Contents

Contents

Executive Summary:..................................................................................................................

Industry Analysis and Market and the associated competition:.................................................

Marketing Plan:..........................................................................................................................

Technical Details......................................................................................................................

Model of Application Components:.........................................................................................

Financial Plan and Analysis:....................................................................................................

Risks and contingencies:..........................................................................................................

Prototype:.................................................................................................................................

Bibliography:............................................................................................................................

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Executive Summary:

We intend to develop an online aggregated trading platform, say iVest, for

Indian market. Indian stock market has seen tremendous growth in past few
years. The digital trading value has seen an average annual growth of 23% in
the last 6 years. This has also created tremendous opportunities for online
trading platforms. As per Credit Suisse, Indian investors are increasing
financial assets over last 20 years by 2% while reducing non-financials by
8.4%. Indians are increasingly buying various market investment tools like
stocks, bonds, mutual funds etc. Due to constant policy push from government
in way of reducing interest rates in low-risk investment tools, domestic retail
investors turned more and more towards markets. To put things into context,
as per SEBI in FY21 14.2 million demat accounts have opened. There are
many discount trading platforms in the market, but we believe there is enough
market for a new player. We are not looking to convert established customers
of other platforms, but we are looking to covert first-time traders and young
traders. iVest will be a discount trading platform. It will try to generate
revenue from economies of scale and from aggregation services. The
aggregation platform will seek to create network effects with the experts
giving paid advice to customers seeking the advice. iVest will have 3 tiers of
advisors with 1 representing silver advisor, 2 representing gold advisor and 3
representing platinum advisor. All the advisors will start from silver category
and move up based on the performance of their advisory. iVest analytical tool
will evaluate the daily advisories and will rank the advisors monthly. Based on
the analytics insights an advisor can move up or down or even out of the
system. A customer can subscribe to any advisor for a nominal charge
monthly. An advisor will list three stocks daily for trading, 1 each from small
cap, mid cap and large cap. Economies of scale will assure that the advisor
will get many subscriptions. iVest will charge a small percentage of subscriber
fees from the advisor.

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Mission

iVest is an innovative financial planning and investing service that takes the
hassle out of trying to figure out what financial products are right for you. We
want to help you make better decisions, so that you can be more confident in
the choices that you make—and not just because they'll help you save money!

As a business, we're equally committed to providing the best possible

customer experience through highly personalised service and support. We
believe that by providing exceptional service, we will continue to grow and
expand our customer base.

We understand that it takes time and dedication to build a successful company.

Our goal is to provide exceptional service for our customers so they can feel
confident about placing their trust in us. We will always strive to exceed
expectations and deliver the product or service that you need when you need
it.

Vision

Our vision is to make cutting-edge trading software accessible to every citizen

of India to invest in the financial market at will with ease. We believe that
only when people have access to financial tools like ours will they be able to
take advantage of the market opportunities with huge untapped potential.

Company Information:

iVest is a limited company, headquartered at Bangalore. We operate in the

field of investment and asset management. iVest is an innovative financial
planning and investing service that takes the hassle out of trying to figure out
what financial products are right for you. We want to help you make better

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decisions, so that you can be more confident in the choices that you make—
and not just because they'll help you save money!

The company's primary focus is to provide high-quality services to its clients

while keeping them at the centre of everything it does.

iVest has a team of highly qualified professionals who provide you with
industry-leading asset management services. Our team members have decades
of experience in the financial services industry, which allows us to provide our
clients with exceptional service from the very beginning of their relationship
with us.

Building long-term relationships with our clients is one of our most important
duties as a company. That's why we offer an excellent range of products and
services for all stages of life—from retirement planning through estate
planning—so that you never have to worry about your needs being met again!

Milestone: We're excited to announce that we've finished the MVP of our
iVest platform.

Industry Analysis and Market and the associated competition:

Basis the total number of unique and active clients for the stockbrokers, the
list of competitive stockbrokers are mentioned below.
The national stock exchange (NSE) website provides the monthly total number
of unique client’s details of the different stockbrokers registered with it.

Sl Name of Stockbrokers No of active Market Share

No clients (%)

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 1 Zerodha Broking Ltd. 6277434 17.42%

2 RKSV Securities India Pvt Ltd 5215523 14.47%

(Upstox)

3 Next Billion Technology Pvt Ltd 3847955 10.68%

4 Angel One Ltd 3657550 10.15%

5 ICICI Securities Ltd 3031192 8.41%

6 5 Paisa Capital Ltd 1754330 4.87%

7 Kotak Securities Ltd 1256001 3.49%

8 HDFC Securities Ltd 1141264 3.17%

9 IIFL Securities Ltd 1132766 3.14%

10 Motilal Oswal Financial Services 896851 2.49%

Ltd

Market Research: In order to check the feasibility of our trading platform, we

intended to carry out market research in order to prove our hypothesis on
willingness for buying financial advice subscription with the increased version
of the trading platforms and individual’s trading preferences. Initially we
carried out secondary research and then carried out primary research through
survey analysis and focus group discussions.

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Primary Market Research:

Survey Details -

Through this market research survey, we not only want to gauge the potential
market size but also who the target audience would be. With the details
gathered we will work on creating a target persona, our direct competitors and
what improvements or suggestions our audience wants us to make, basis their
current trading platform exp.

The total sample size consisted of 173 individuals.

Spread across a week’s time starting from September 25th – 30th

Objectives of the survey

-We have conducted the analysis below to identify the Total Addressable
Market, which is the available market for a product or service that can be
reached and is composed of unmet demand from current customers and those
who might purchase from elsewhere

-Identify avenues of Vertical development that would enable us to pull ahead

of our competitors in the market by offering a complete portfolio of solution
tools, packaged products, and services for technical support. Horizontal
development would help us increase our product portfolio, and marketing
reach and thereby strengthen our product differentiation.

-Gain Customer opinion and insights would help us determine short term,
long-term strategy/goals. We need to know what our customers want and
how they feel about our products/services. This will allow us to determine if
we are offering the right products in the right categories (or not).

-Better Understand Customer depth and Customer Behavior, understanding

these two factors would help us understand how our potential customers
would behave, so that our product and services can be tweaked based on their
needs.

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Customer depth refers to how deep the customer is into a product or service.
While customer behavior would refer to what potential actions customers
would take when they are using our products and services.

Please find the below survey link

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfeEfPvramw1gtX-
DwVBo3DFE2iQ5ApfE9oMup45WsI7V_JNQ/viewform

Inferential Analysis-

Multivariate Regression Analysis:

iVest had converted qualitative data based on responses to quantitative one for
ease of our analysis.

Applying Multivariate tests for multiple categories of independent variables

(Which age group do you belong to? For the current platform, how would you
rate ease of use? Which version of the trading platform do you use? How do
you make trading/investing decisions?) gives below equation

From Anova chart, we can conclude below 2 variables can significantly affect
people purchasing subscriptions for financial advice. (Since only these 2
variables have p-value less than 0.05).

· Which version of the trading platform do you use?

· How do you make trading/investing decisions?

From Anova chart, we can conclude below variables don't have significant
effect.

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 · Which age group do you belong to?

· For the current platform, how would you rate ease of use?

Regression Equation:

Regression coefficient are 0.680540914740636 as Y-Intercept and

0.021224374, -0.093409273, 0.179164241, 0.177771834 as slope, hence
regression equation will look like

Y= 0.680540914740636 + 0.021224374 * Which age group do you belong to -

0.093409273 * For the current platform, how would you rate ease of use
+0.179164241* Which version of the trading platform do you use +
0.177771834043959 * How do you make trading/investing decisions

This equation can be inferred as 1% increase in version of the trading

platforms, increases customers willingness to buy financial advice
subscription by .17%.

But this model is average fit, since R square is 0.366755493853937, which

means only 36.67% of variation increase in willingness for buying financial
advice subscription can be explained by increased version of the trading
platforms and individual’s trading preferences.

We have worked on making the modelling algorithm better by incorporating

the various parameters like RSI, moving averages into consideration.

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Secondary Market Research-

Details: We have planned and carried our research in both exploratory and
conclusive mode. In exploratory research, we have carried out focus group
discussions among small groups and recorded the discussions. In the
conclusive research, we have done the consumer survey and done regression
analysis to capture the outcome.

Overview and Methodology on Focus group discussion

We had conducted a focus group discussion in Oct 2022 to assess investor

views on Current Market Offerings in Securities Trading.

Focus Group Arrangement Summary

Focus Group Discussions

Below are a few crucial snippets of our online focus group discussion.

● We planned two online focus group discussions including members

across cities in India

● The Focus group was homogeneous with aspiring middle-class

participants who were currently using trading platforms for the investments

● Participants were briefed prior about the agenda of the focus group
discussion

● Prior invitations were sent over email to participants

● The Focus group discussion was 1 hour long

● Questions were prioritized based on time available and kept short to

keep participants interested

● Three members were present to document the discussion

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Interviewees had to have actively invested in one or more securities (equity &
derivative) within the previous one year in order to be eligible to participate in
one of the focus groups. Additionally, potential participants were not allowed
to have a family member who worked in market or survey research, nor could
they have participated in a focus group within the previous 12 months. Google
meet call was used to conduct the focus group discussion using a sample
group of people with salaries of at least ₹ 10 L.P.A and falling within the age
bands of 30 - 40 years.

Additionally, they got a call the day before the gathering as a reminder. Before
the focus group call, a second screening was done to make sure that all
participants met the required eligibility criteria.

Biodata of participants:

Ayan Abhishek
Vishal Jyothi Mukherj Maheshwa
Name Vijayan Kurien Merissa Nikhil Pn ee ri Ravi D
Hydraba Bangalor Hyderaba
City d Bangalore e Hydrabad Kolkata Mumbai d
Royal
School Of
Hotel
Organizati CITCO Manageme HSBC
on Banking nt TCS Venwiz Bank Tata Steel EY
Student Operatio Senior
Designatio Financia Coordinato Legal ns Head, Coal Consulta
n l Analyst r Counsel Manager AVP Buyer nt
Age Band 28 27 27 29 36 35 32

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 Snapshot of the invitation to participants for focus group interview:

Outcomes of the Focus group Interviews are given below:

Focus Group Discussion outcome

What are your thoughts on -ease of functioning and user interface

current trading platforms in the
-You can trade and access apps from anywhere

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market? -Too many brokerage players in the market, causing customer
confusion

- Penetration and usage among the population is still nascent

How do you execute your Trades by self - 5 participants

current trade (Yourself/external
Mutual funds - 3 participants
trader/mutual funds/others)

How often do you trade? Long Term Investor: 3 Participants

Short Term Investor: 4 Participants

Do you think trading in Yes, it is: 3 Participants

securities is a major part of your
No: 4 Participants
investment strategy?

How much would you be willing 1.5 to 2% of profit value

to pay for a trade advisory
service?

What do you think is currently - Future steps a company has planned to take (can be sourced from
missing from other offerings in public medium)
the market?
- They do not facilitate trade in international stock

- Easy technical indicators

- Regulation in trading advisories

Do you think a dual advisory -Yes for 4 participants.

and trading platform will be
-Some asked about details as how would the company predict the
useful to you?
market info as this is not simple

What would make you a better -Proper knowledge of the company's activity
investor?
-Market knowledge

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 -Financial knowhow

What are the different platforms -ET Trade, Zerodha, HDFC securities, ICICI Direct, Groww etc.
that you are aware of which
offer brokerage as well as
market/investment advisory?

Which trading platform do you - Zero brokerage charges for platforms Zerodha
use and why?
-User friendly and additional features associated

-3 in one service provided by ICICI/HDFC securities

Focus group data were analysed, and common trends were identified between
answers given by each participant. These answers formed the base for
conclusive research done using consumer surveys.

Easy access to technical indicators and company financials seems to be an

important ask from users. They feel a more user-friendly approach to the
above will significantly help in determining investment strategy. A participant
noted that he looked at any company's previous 10 years performance before
putting his money, while another member of the same group used a mutual
fund prospectus to "gain an understanding of the fund as a whole,", Both said
that they use it as a top-level guide in selecting where we want to go.

In terms of interface, a small experiment was conducted wherein participants

were asked to select their preferred view of portfolio allocation from three
given options. In addition, participants were requested to provide justifications
for their decision and discuss any obstacles that may have arisen during the
process.

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The participants were shown a list, a bar chart, and a pie chart to display a
mutual fund's portfolio allocation. Others preferred the pie chart because it
visually represented the distribution of the holdings, while some participants
chose the list because it was easy to read. Few participants appeared to prefer
the bar chart to the list or pie chart; several commented that they would have
to add the bars, which would conclude that displaying the pie chart was more
straightforward for users to consume. Further a participant noted that it is
easier to determine the proportions of holdings using the pie chart than the bar
chart. Another participant from the same group indicated that "The result
comes out much stronger on the pie chart."

Marketing Plan:

Build A Brand

Small or medium-sized businesses and businesses in the stock brokerage

industry need to pay more attention to the importance of branding oneself.
This is especially true when beginning an internet business, as it can take time
to find the time to do so.

Even though the brokerage industry mostly deals with money, Branding needs
to be more noticed and addressed. At IVest we wish to acquire the trust of
your customers and feel that via Branding, we can establish a stronger rapport
with them and keep the lines of communication open.

Our brand would impart a sense of professionalism and instil a sense of

confidence in our customers, better increasing the likelihood that individuals
seeking stock-related services will recognize our company
Through branding and brand collaborations, we will communicate value and
develop credibility among consumers, making it more straightforward for

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them to determine whether to purchase a product based solely on its
reputation.

To distinguish ourselves from the competition and establish our company as

an authority on trading and brokerage, we will start by producing outstanding
content that will assist users in getting the most out of their trades. There are
many ways that you could go about doing this, but we've come to understand
that customer education is one of the most effective ways of establishing trust
and authority.

At first, our content may focus on the basics—what you need to know about
trading and brokers, how to find the best deals, etcetera. As time goes on, we'll
expand into more advanced topics like how to structure your portfolio, how to
manage risk effectively, and so on.

Brand Messaging:

 iVest believes in transparency and openness. Because a brokerage

service involves money, most users don't trust it. Several stock
brokerage firms still offer their clients illogical and opaque pricing.
IVest would differ by offering a conventional value proposition.
Customer queries would receive direct responses and concise
solutions.

 We understand how crucial evolution and change are to growth. And

utilise the best of technology to provide something novel to our
clientele. 

 We adopt a strategy where we first educate our users. New traders

must first learn the ropes of the trade. The ability to teach users to

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 realise why they are going bankrupt or deal more intelligently would
be what drives us.

Marketing mediums:

We will do this through traditional advertising and media planning. Our

advertising will be distributed through news websites and PR campaigns who
are focussed on presenting information on the newest trends in the stock
brokerage sector.

Additionally, our website will be user-friendly on mobile devices, and will

contain links to blogs where customers can learn more about our background.
We will also showcase positive client testimonials so that potential clients may
feel more comfortable using our services.

We will further use a variety of digital channels to reinforce our marketing

message.

- Paid advertising: A strategy for bringing highly focused visitors to our

website is paid search. To guarantee focus user segmentation to makes channel
productive. Every step of the way, we will make sure to test our paid search
campaigns and make any necessary adjustments. We will also make use of a
multi-channel strategy approach.

- Search engine optimization (SEO): We will optimize our website so that it

appears high in search results. This will increase the number of people who
see our content, which in turn increases its reach and impact. We will also
partner with affiliates and create a larger pool of backlinks

- Social media: We can help post helpful content on platforms like Facebook
and Twitter and engage our audience and drive engagement. By running quiz

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programs and interactive games offering up rewards. This would drive
referrals. We will examine user behaviour to see what people are saying about
our brand. Additionally, knowing which social media network hosts most of
our users would also offer us a wealth of important information on fresh
methods to engage with our target market.

-Newsletters: The stock broking sector is full of exciting developments and

activities. We want to keep our clients informed about these developments and
will be sending out regular newsletters in the coming months. The main
purpose of the newsletters would be to nurture our clientele and would include
our thoughts on various companies in the markets

- Influencers: are most likely to be observed by our potentials customers and,

as a result, have a significant impact on their decisions. Consumers might
think of brand influencers as the ultimate "shoppers' guides," giving them
knowledge about goods and services before they decide to make a purchase.

We will engage brand influencers in one of three ways to boost sales: growing
product demand through sampling programmes, enhancing loyalty through
word-of-mouth marketing, and raising overall brand exposure.

Unique Selling Proposition Of iVest:

 High speed where it matters 

 Focus on teaching the ropes 
 iVest will be a discount trading platform
 Marketplace model with experts being connected to customers seeking
advice
 Real time multi device engagement

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Target Audience:

IVest will primarily target prospective audiences under the age of 35 years. 
focusing on those who have recently started working, have already begun
saving from their income, and are looking for better ways to save and invest
their money so they can grow it successfully. Tier 1 metro cities will be
targeted first since internet penetration and digital use is higher.

Considering that around 14.1 million demat accounts were created in FY21
alone.

Competition tracking - To arrive at a gap in marketing positioning amongst

competitors we will do a social media listening exercise. This will help us
understand user sentiment and what’s being missed by the segment players.
Planning Philosophy

 Communication and Media Strategy

 Media Alignment to communication strategy

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Create detailed FAQs and explainers: The first step in our marketing suite is to
create a detailed openly accessible repository of information that our target
audience (beginner/novice traders) can refer to for any queries. We want to
build our category of users by giving them the tools to learn the trade and then
the platform to execute them. 

Aspirational excitement: Get people to talk and show off their wins by
creating a weekly/monthly leader board of users with the highest win rates.
Channels used would be - Outdoor hoardings and social media. (Is there
anyone who wouldn't want their name/face on a billboard?) 

Facilitate social competition:  friends and family members can face off against
each other through isolated trading rooms or learn and copy each other's trades
(if users grants permissions) 

“The problem with the world is that the intelligent people are full of doubts,
while the stupid ones are full of confidence": iVest will house a dedicated
team of relationship managers who are able to help potential customers
identify their risk appetite and lend a human touch to better understanding the
category and the services.

Using a referral model to attract more customers - where current customers are
rewarded for introducing new registrations to iVest. In the initial stages, we
will build a pre-launch waiting list which creates exclusivity for the iVest
platform. It would build a sense of curiosity even before the launch of the
platform. We will mainly include this by adding a ‘sign-up page’ and ‘thank-
you page’ where customers can register and earn cash referrals even before the
platform is fully launched. These referrals will continue throughout to attract
as many customers as possible to experience this new way of trading through
our iVest platform. 

 Gaining traction through industry-specific influencers and review sites

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  Establishing an effective PR Strategy to ensure people continue talking

Basis the focus interviews with customer the insights were collated to
fine tune the targetable persona and identification of marketable
universe. We used Google forecasting tool to identify the CPC and
sample conversion metrics for basic keywords to drive awareness
campaign.

Estimate Accoun
Estimated d t
Segmentati Estimate Impressio Estimate Estimate Average Currenc Conversio Conversio Averag
on d Clicks ns d Cost d CTR CPC y n Rate ns e CPA

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Campaign 24426.7 155000.0
total 5 280791.06 0 8.7% 6.35 INR 5.96% 1500 110.00

Desktop 100.82 1201.35 299.97 8.4% 2.98 INR

24296.5 154656.1
Mobile 7 279306.69 8 8.7% 6.37 INR

Tablet 29.36 283.02 43.85 10.4% 1.49 INR

24426.7 155000.0
India 5 280791.06 0 8.7% 6.35 INR

India -
Desktop 100.82 1201.35 299.97 8.4% 2.98 INR

India - 24296.5 154656.1

Mobile 7 279306.69 8 8.7% 6.37 INR

India -
Tablet 29.36 283.02 43.85 10.4% 1.49 INR

Source – Google
The initial awareness campaign will be used to build interest and help
pre-register for the app download.

The strategy for communication will include influencers who will have
early access to the app and advisory service.

After building the initial buzz the app will open for download for the
target audience.

Sample Ad –

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 Source – Google, Dentsu report

The Competition:

Using the porter’s five forces of competitive position analysis, we will analyse
the competitive intensity and attractiveness of the market.

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 Suppliers: Low
 NSDL, CSDL are the regulatory bodies for the depository bodies like
ICICIdirect.com. As well the bargaining power of these regulatory
bodies will be high than the broking houses.
 NSE, BSE are under the purview of SEBI, that is why the broking
houses have lower bargaining power.
 MCX, NCDEX are the stock exchanges which trade in commodities
and derivatives. Here again the stock broking houses must follow the
rules and regulations of the same
 Web maintainers are the companies which maintain web services and
websites of the same. Hence, the brokers have the bargaining power
over the web maintainers due to intense competitions.

Buyers: High
 There are various types of investors who does trading through stock
broking houses which includes small investors, HNIs, partners etc.
 Bargaining power of the stockbroker depends on how much big they
are.
 Accordingly, we can say that the bargaining power of the stockbrokers
are high in case of the small investors.
 Bargaining power will be moderate for HNIs and medium net worth
investors.
 Bargaining power will be less in case of institutional investors.

Entry Barriers: Moderately High

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 Regulatory Constraints: Obtaining a license would be the difficult task
for a stock broking house. It should comply with the regulations of the
governing bodies like SEBI, NSDL
  Technology: Technology is the backbone for the modern age stock
broking companies. Huge amount of capital to be pumped into the
technology part, also skilled manpower is required
 Experience curve: For entering the already intense competitive broker
house market, one should establish the TRUST factor amongst the
buyers, so that they can withstand against the existing players like
Angle One, Motilal Oswal etc.

Competitors: Moderately High

 Competition is high from the high-end players like 5 Paisa, Motilal
Oswal companies
 There’s exist tough competition from online trading houses like
Upstox, Zerodha etc

Potential Entrants: Medium

 The potential entrants like investmart, Paytm money etc are coming in
near future
Substitutes: Medium
 The instruments like Bank FD, insurance, MFs are the substitutes
 The companies and banks which are having these instruments can
plunge into this industry
 Hence, from the above analysis, we can say that the market is
moderately attractive with high entry barriers, high supplier power, and
high competition. 

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Operations:

Bangalore will be the primary head office for now since the project is still in
its nascent stages. Once it becomes scalable more branches can be opened. A
team of 15 technical members will be undertaking RnD activities to make
product market ready. IVest will be compliant with the local laws and
financial regulations.

Personnel:
The company will consist of 15 technical team members and 3 marketing
members they will follow the above organization structure. The company
plans to outsource members for other activities related to HR and finance.

Financial Plan and Analysis:

The following are the details of prominent discount brokers and the charges
they levy on various transactions:

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With the intent to capture the market, we intend to levy the lowest charges on
various transactions. The following table shows the details:

Additionally, we won’t be charging any fees to open an account with us. At

this point in time, we do not intend to deal in commodities.

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 Projected cashflow for the first 3 years

Risks and contingencies:

 Technology Risk: The time delay that is added when moving data
points across applications is known as latency. Think about the
following progression of things. A price quote takes 0.2 seconds to
travel from the exchange to the data centre of your software vendor,
0.3 seconds to travel to your trading screen, 0.1 seconds to be
processed by your trading software, 0.3 seconds to be analysed and
placed as a trade, 0.2 seconds for your trade order to reach your broker,
and 0.3 seconds for your broker to route your order to the exchange.
The whole amount of time that has passed is equal to 1.4 seconds. The
initial price quote would have changed numerous times over this 1.4
second period in the dynamic trading environment of today. An
algorithmic trading endeavour could succeed or fail based on any
delay. To guarantee that one receives the most recent and accurate
information without a lag, one must minimise this latency to the
absolute minimum.

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 Once we proceed further with this project, we will be able to assess
and write down more risks associated. We will also engage Subject
Matter Experts to guide us further.
 SWOT Analysis

SWOT Analysis focuses on four important factors while evaluating the

quality of a company. Here’s what SWOT Analysis for stocks looks at:
 S—> Strength
 W—> Weakness
 O—> Opportunity
 T—> Threat

SWOT Analysis of iVest

 Strengths:

 State-of-the-art technology

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iVest is dedicated to making our products the best in their class.
We believe that our state-of-the-art technology and user-
friendly design will make your experience with us a breeze.

 Highly available and scalable Infrastructure

iVest is committed to providing highly available technology,

infrastructure, and support to our clients. With our expertise in
providing infrastructure solutions for mission-critical
applications, we have developed a proprietary platform that
allows us to manage the entire lifecycle of your data centre.

 Innovative user experience

At iVest, we believe that the best products are built by

listening to our customers. we're dedicated to creating a

friendly and innovative online community for you.

 Much faster response time.

At iVest, we believe that responsiveness is key to the

success of any business. We have developed a new way to
help businesses speed up their response time: our new high-
tech, innovative system. It's easy to use, and it can be
customised to fit your needs.

 Huge number of a younger audience

We will be able to attract many younger audiences looking

for an opportunity to invest in their future. Our strength is
our ability to innovate, and we have the resources and
expertise to take on any challenge.

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  A large number of active users.

The investment platform has a strong community of active

users and has made significant investments in the strength
of this platform.

 Lowest brokerage rates

We are providing the lowest brokerage which will

strengthen the investment, and we can help get the best
return on your investments.

 Weakness:
 Limited services

IVest has fallen short of delivering several services or

features that its competitors provide. Some of these include
making IPO and FPO investments; moreover, it does not
provide API access for automated trading. We are currently
coming up with limited services of investment. We will
increase our number of services with time and proper
planning.

 Lack of Knowledge/ awareness.

There are still people who are unaware of trading in various

sections of the country. It does not provide stock
recommendations or ideas, which could make a beginner
trader’s experience more difficult.

 Customer service.

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 As we are a start-up, we don’t have the bandwidth to invest
much in customer service. We can delegate it to some 3rd
party to look after this.

 Huge competition

Stock trading is a competitive market. Firms are up against

fierce rivalry, which is inherent in every business.

 R&D

 Opportunities:
 Entering other investment products.

We are currently coming up with limited services. We have

huge opportunity to manage all asset classes.

 Huge customer base

Currently, there are 14.2 million demat accounts. With

increased awareness, there is a huge customer base for the
new players too.

 Awareness on Investment

With shifting educational reforms and government

regulations aimed at educating investors and raising trading
awareness among the general public, there is a growing
opportunity for stock brokerage firms.

 Provision of full trading experience

Huge opportunity to provide full trading services like

HDFC, ICICI, etc.

 Bullish market

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 Because every investor is drawn to bullish markets, they
provide a good opportunity for firms.

 Investment Market research

By thoroughly researching market circumstances, the

company may take advantage of the opportunity to provide
customised brokerage services while also improving the
existing investor experience.

 Threats:
 Established competitors like ICICI, HDFC, Kotak, etc

Because firms can enter and quit an industry with few

limitations, the number of substitutes in the same product
line at different prices poses a risk of losing the investor
base.

 New entrants like Groww, Paytm Money

 Frequent changes in Government policies

Government policies change regularly in our country.

Furthermore, political upheaval in the country might disrupt
trading cycles and negatively affect stock markets.

 Cyber frauds

With the advancement of the digital era, there has been an

increase in the number of occurrences of cybercrime.
Because the firm’s operations are conducted entirely online,
there is a greater risk of fraud and the loss of the personal
information of investors.

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  A bearish market can endanger the investment firms

The inherent nature of stock markets poses the greatest

danger to stockbroker companies. Bearish market
conditions pose a significant risk because no investor wants
to trade in such circumstances.

Minimum Viable Product:

Prototyping as an experimental process where design teams implement
ideas into tangible forms from paper to digital. Teams build prototypes of
varying degrees of fidelity to capture design concepts and test on users.
With prototypes, you can refine and validate your designs so your brand
can release the right products.
The Advisory service lets the traders get in touch with experts who are at
the forefront of the game and are licensed by SEBI to share their expertise
with others. So, to eliminate the guessing game of whose advice is right

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we need to create a leaderboard. With our transparent solution, A list of
registered advisers can be compared based on their total profit, average
profit accuracy, number of deals, and average trade time. Additionally,
traders may view the extensive historical performances of advisors by
clicking on their individual profiles, giving them a clear understanding of
who is a competent advisor and who is not in just a matter of seconds. So
once the trader has made up his mind to follow a registered  advisor,  he
has the option of  following them for both their free and paid trades, The
key differentiator between plans is that if trader chooses to go for a
premium plan he can copy all the trades from the advisor, While if he is
proceeding with a free plan he will only be able to copy free trades
specifically designated by the advisor. 

Technical Details-
For iVest Application, we are designing the web Application architecture
displays the interactions between application components, middleware
systems, user interfaces, and databases. This kind of interaction allows a
number of applications to work together simultaneously.

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High level diagram for Web Application architecture helps to have an efficient
common language to find solutions for repeated issues and conceptualize
them. It minimizes the amount of work they do since there is no need to
reinvent the wheel.

Model of Application Components:

Multiple Web Server, Multiple Databases

This is the most efficient and reliable web application model. The reason is
that both servers and databases have multiple substitutions. So, in case of
failure, there are two way-outs: to store data in all the accessible databases or
distribute it evenly among them. Anyway, the web site will be safe and sound.

Frontend: Server-Side Rendered Application (SSR)

SSR is the process of rendering a client-side JavaScript framework website to

HTML and CSS on the server. With the help of this tool, it’s possible to

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quickly deliver the most important assets, thus accelerating the browser’s
speed rendering the page to the user takes less time.

When you build an SSR app, the server compiles all the data and serves up a
new HTML document on each request. And once the browser gets the CSS,
it’s able to paint the UI, and it’s not necessary to wait for JavaScript to load.
This is how it makes the page load faster.

Backend: Microservices

Microservices is one of the types of SOA (service-oriented architecture). In

general, microservices deals with small and lightweight services and execute a
single functionality. This type of web architecture design is efficient and
productive.

At current, we are developing the prototype on our local system but for scaling
and performance, we are planning to migrate this App to Public Cloud MS
Azure, which can concurrently handle a large number of users which will have
very high fault tolerance and highly available during the peak timings too.

Our principal criteria for building a reliable application architecture:

 Efficient
 Flexible
 Reusable
 Easily testable
 Solves problems consistently and successfully
 With well-structured and understandable code
 Scalable in the development process
 Have fast response times
 Doesn’t crush
 Doesn’t have a single point of failure

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  Simple
 Uses go-to security standards

-
Advisor verification controls

We are looking to create a minimum viable product. The following are the
details of the product development:

Software stack:

1. Docker
2. Python
3. Elasticsearch
4. Kibana

Implementation:

We have downloaded the data from NSE website for the options trading. In
real time this would be streaming data from NSE. But for ease of development
and development of algorithm(s) we are working with static data for now. For
an MVP, we are trying to develop an algorithm that can suggest options long
and short (screenshots attached). We seek guidance from the mentor on the
specifics of the algorithms we can develop. We have successfully
implemented the first modelling of stock prediction. The team started working
with deep learning literature and also understand financial charts. The

39
following are some of the charts that showcase the prediction on test set data
for the stock of Apple.

40
The following chart shows the prediction versus the actual value over
the entire data set for Apple.

As can be seen the prediction roughly follows the actual values but we
can tighten the bounds at every point. Presently the only aspects of the
stock value we took into consideration for feature vector is the
“Opening” price. Taking into consideration ratios/values such as RSI,
moving averages etc will give us a better fitting curve. This data
unfortunately is not available for Indian stocks very readily and that is
the reason we had to pick up American stocks. We intend to purchase
API subscription and make sure the model becomes better.

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Bibliography:

https://tradebrains.in/biggest-stockbrokers-india-with-highest-clients/

https://www.businesstoday.in/markets/stocks/story/zerodha-upstox-demolish-
traditional-broking-biz-customers-the-ultimate-winners-280271-2020-12-02

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/p/porter.asp

https://www.businessinsider.in/stock-market/news/zerodha-and-groww-see-
big-growth-as-indians-flock-to-stock-markets/articleshow/84056218.cms

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/10/02/indias-millennials-are-driving-a-surge-in-
stock-trading-during-covid.html

https://www.statista.com/statistics/1276495/india-y-o-y-growth-rate-in-digital-
trading-value-2021

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