Who is Avadhut Sathe, the finfluencer SEBI cracked down on?

Avadhut Sathe

In a dimly lit auditorium, more than 50 students are clad in graduation caps and gowns; smiling faces of their children, wives, husbands, mothers, and fathers look down on them from a screen. It is the convocation of the Avadhut Sathe Training Academy (ASTA), where participants of the three-month Gurukul Mentorship Program are receiving their graduation certificates.

Sathe is standing on the dais, commanding the attention of over a hundred people with ease. "I believe a daughter and mother are born at the same time; when a daughter is born, so is a mother. Similarly, when all of the ASTAians decided to join the Mentorship Program, I was born as a gurukul mentor," he quips.

Avadhut Sathe is a finfluencer, dabbling in the markets since 1991. He grew up in a modest chawl in Dadar, central Mumbai, before moving to Mulund in the northern suburbs. With an engineering degree, he was able to begin his career on a strong footing.

After spending time working in the US, Singapore, and Australia he decided to return to India. After finding success in investing and trading, he decided to quit his job to train students full-time from 2008.

According to his training academy’s website, he is a “man with a compelling vision of achieving financial independence for every class of people in India, Avadhut Sathe is a successful trader with over three decades of trading and investing experience.”

At 6:30 am on August 20, market regulator Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) officials, led by a deputy general manager, knocked on Sathe’s doors. He had been under the regulator’s scanner for months.

SEBI noted the action was aimed at sending a signal that it was intensifying enforcement against market influencers who misguide retail traders under the garb of education.

However, according to testimonials, it is easy to believe otherwise. “Avadhut Sathe is a man with an extraordinary vision.” “No one can match the level of Avadhut Sathe sir’s teaching when it comes to the stock market.” “His passion, clarity, and the deeper purpose behind his teaching truly set him apart,” note students.

His YouTube page highlights customer success, ranging from a homemaker who made 50 percent on her capital in three months to another housewife who breached the Rs 1 crore barrier in just 2.5 years through trading.

In 2023, Sathe went viral. He was recorded dancing in a large hall in his Pune academy, in front of a screen flashing with live tickers. Netizens joked about the unusual method of teaching, but the students present joined in on the celebration.

However, all are not convinced. Tags of fraud and scamster were making the rounds before SEBI raided Sathe’s Karjat facility. Other finfluencers and market participants often accused Sathe of misleading investors for personal gains through his training academy.

ASTA: Avadhut Sathe Training Academy

Established in 2008 with one location, today, the Academy has 17 branches across the nation, from Mumbai, Delhi, and Bengaluru to smaller cities such as Bhubaneshwar, Kochi, and Nagpur. Online classes are also taught for students from international locations such as the UAE and the United States; courses are offered in a variety of languages, English, Hindi, Tamil, Marathi and Telugu.

The training academy has developed a dedicated social media following over the years. Its YouTube presence boasts of nearly one million subscribers, while its Instagram following count clocks in at 2,37,000 accounts. Students were found through ads, personal testimonials and relentless social media campaigns. The first introductory courses were free to pique their interest.

Then those enrolled in Avadhut Sathe Training Academy (ASTA)’s online and offline courses would learn to identify the market structure and find opportunities to trade. Not restricted to just equities, the classes would span across currencies and commodities as well.

Programmes - webinars to three-month residential training - cost between Rs 21,000 and Rs 1.7 lakh. Students opting for the intensive courses were offered live trading sessions by Avadhut Sathe, along with access to an exclusive WhatsApp group with him.

The curriculum even went beyond technical learning. ASTA attempted to integrate psychology, yoga, sanskaar, and satsangs, along with training on the ‘God Market’ - Sathe’s chosen nomenclature for the financial markets.

ASTA’s website proclaims that “life is a celebration and every ASTAian a celebrity.” It adds that learners are given two wings: “The ‘Knowledge and Wisdom wing’ through various programs and handholding; and the ‘Energy Wing’ through the culture of AFOOFA (all-for-one-one-for-all) developed very carefully and lovingly, by Avadhut Sathe.”

Nevertheless, ASTA did not just stop at training. Sathe also advised students on penny stocks and provided other tips over private WhatsApp groups. These recommendations involved Sathe working with operators or promoters in order to push such stocks onto the unsuspecting students, who would buy en masse, hoping their five rupees balloons to five hundred, said sources.

Master of sales

According to sources, the training business has been lucrative for Sathe. Just from the training academy, sales have been on a sharp growth path. The academy likely earned Rs 17 crore in 2021, which more than doubled to Rs 37 crore in 2022 and then jumped to Rs 86 crore in 2023.

In 2024, the sales likely clocked in at Rs 116 crore, and according to estimates for 2025, the number could roughly be Rs 200 crore. However, these numbers are based on projections and Moneycontrol could not independently verify the same.

Word on the Street

Sathe’s credibility was waning even before the SEBI crackdown. Finfluencers and analysts had shunned him from their circle of legitimacy, instead grouping him with the likes of Asmita Patel and Md Nasir, criticized for aggressive self-promotion and questionable market practices.

In 2023, Ritesh Gulrajani, a SEBI Registered Investment Advisor (RIA), had informally reported Sathe. An investigating officer visited his house during a routine check-up, following which, Gulrajani flagged Sathe’s flagrant videos, stating that “people like Avadhut Sathe are making a mockery of the system.”

“The videos on YouTube showed how he was fooling people. In one of his videos, he made a little girl come on the stage and flaunt on trading returns. That was a shock to me. Imagine young children getting into F&O!” added Gulrajani.

In conversation with Moneycontrol, Aseem Juneja, the founder of A Digital Blogger and Stock Pathshala said the raid on Sathe was on the cards. “This guy has been on the block for a while. It's very easy to identify such folks, they glamorise the market and have a specific niche. In Sathe’s case, his niche was the 30 plus individuals and married individuals looking for secondary income, or 45-50 year olds looking to start afresh.”

Juneja, who runs an e-learning platform to discuss the basics of the markets, explained how students were taken through Sathe’s courses. They would be passed through a conversation funnel. First, free sample courses were offered, following which sessions worth Rs 70,000-80,000 were promoted. Those who took up those sessions would be upsold mentorship programs that could cost upwards of Rs 5 lakh, Juneja noted.

Over the past six months, Juneja has been in conversation with 20-25 disillusioned participants of Sathe’s academy. “They felt betrayed or guilty because they thought they would learn something and start making money. However, when faced with losses, students are unable to share this because of shame. Their own humiliation kind of comes into picture,” he noted.

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