Stock trading platform Punch raises $7 million in a mix of debt and equity

Ajit Dandekar, Hiral Jain, Amit Dhakad, Arshad Fahoum, cofounders of Punch

Stock trading platform Punch has raised $7 million in seed funding through a combination of debt and equity. The investment round was led by Stellaris Venture Partners, Susquehanna Asia VC, Prime Venture Partners, and Innoven Capital.

Notable angel investors participating in the round include Kunal Shah, founder and CEO of Cred; Vatsal Singhal, co-founder of Ultrahuman; and Nitish Mittersain, founder and CEO of Nazara.

The startup plans to allocate the funds towards research and development, technology and product enhancement, and talent acquisition.

“We are going to largely focus on R&D itself. The problems that we have identified are meaningful. People are seeing new habits formed by using our app and we want to develop this and scale it,” said Amit Dhakad, cofounder of Punch.

Founded in 2022 by Amit Dhakad, Hiral Jain, Arshad Fahoum and Ajit Dandekar, Punch is built for first-time traders who want to build responsible trading behaviour through innovative yet intuitive safety tools. The founders originally founded Market Pulse, a charting app eight years ago.

“Our goal over the next year is to focus on R&D and also invest in scaling the app, we want to 4X-5X the number of users of our app in our next three to four months, and after this, we will look at our marketing efforts,” Dhakad added.

Mumbai-based Punch is a registered brand and trading platform developed by Market Pulse Securities, a SEBI-registered broker. The platform enables index and stock options trading, as well as direct stock trading.

The funding comes at a time when the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi), India’s markets regulator, had  proposed tighter rules on trading in individual stock derivatives, arguing the rules were needed to avert risks of market manipulation after recent explosive growth particularly in options trading.

Under the proposed rules, for a stock to be considered for futures and options (F&O) trading, it should have traded for 75% of trading days, SEBI said.

“Options trading has traditionally faced regulatory scrutiny due to its inherent risks and complexities. Despite these challenges, young traders continue to explore it as a viable pursuit, not fully understanding the risk of losses,” Dhakad added.

Punch’s built-in safety tools help traders adhere to daily and weekly trading limits and mitigate the risk of significant losses.

“This approach aims to embed risk management into the trading experience without overwhelming beginners with complex mechanisms,” Dhakad added.

Punch has around 19,000 registered accounts on its platform that have been using the beta version of the app.