Fintech stock trading platform MarketWolf on July 6 announced a $10 million Series A fundraise led by Jungle Ventures and Dream Capital – the corporate venture arm of Dream Sports (Dream11 parent).
Existing investors and others including 9Unicorns, iSeed, Crescent, and Riverwalk, also participated in the round. With this, the total capital raised by the company since its inception rose to $17.4 million.
MarketWolf, which was founded by Vishesh Dhingra and Thomas Joseph to democratise the trading ecosystem with the vision of ‘Anyone Can Trade’, plans to use this fresh round of funding for building out its product suite and to hire top talent across product, marketing, and engineering functions, the company said in a release. It aims to make the trading experience as easy and jargon-free as possible while ensuring protection against market volatility through its robust in-built risk management system, practice and learn modules, and low-ticket size investment options.
On the back of this curated trading experience, the number of trading accounts and retail active clients grew 10 times compared to the same period last year, despite the volatility seen in public capital markets this year. In fact, the app targeted at first-time investors saw over 1.5 million downloads in India over the last 18 months.
Commenting on the fundraise, Vishesh Dhingra, Founder & CEO, MarketWolf, said: “While building an easy and appealing user experience for anyone to trade well in stock markets, we saw the early adoption from mobile gamers. Today, we are at the intersection of two of the most popular and hyper-growth verticals in the new world – stock trading and mobile gaming – both sharing elements of high engagement, excitement, and experiential learning. With risk management at its core, MarketWolf is fast becoming the go-to stock trading platform for the mobile gaming generation, who likes to explore new and more immersive ways of doing things.”
Dhingra added: “We are extremely proud to partner with Jungle Ventures, Dream Capital, and all our investors in our mission to create a global community of MarketWolves. With the average retail stock holding period going down from eight years to eight months over the past few decades, we believe that in the future, there will be fewer Bulls or Bears and more MarketWolves – people who given the right tools, can capitalise on the latest market opportunities by adjusting their trading styles along with the change in market conditions.”
Arpit Beri, Principal, Jungle Ventures, said: “Retail participation in the stock market in India continues to remain abysmally low at three to five percent and we believe that MarketWolf has the right product, as well as the right team and expertise to break through this market. With its highly intuitive and gamified user interface, along with the managed risk controls, MarketWolf simplifies the trading experience making it the best-suited platform for young India to start trading like a pro. The company has already demonstrated tremendous stickiness and virality with its consumers and we are excited to be a part of their next stages of growth.”
Dev Bajaj, who leads Dream Capital as the Chief Strategy Officer for Dream Sports said: “We believe that disruptive gamification will happen across B2C. MarketWolf is leading this effort in fintech and we are glad to partner with them to democratize trading in India.”
Notably, the platform that was listed among the top 15 brokers in India in terms of retail active clients in NSE in 2021, follows the model of charging brokerage fees only on profitable trades. MarketWolf has plans to launch more exciting products customized for the new-age retail investors and mobile gamers while mitigating the inherent risks associated with public capital markets.
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