Tradelab using software to bring a trade revolution in India

Globally, derivative trading has been going strong, however in India, it is in its nascent stages. According to a report by IOSR Journal of Economics and Finance, there seems to be a positive growth in terms of volume and the number of contracts traded in the past decade. The report said that the market turnover has grown from Rs.2365 crores in 2000-2001 to Rs Rs. 26,444804.86 crores in 2013-14. However, many believe that since the market is yet to be fully developed, it provides ample opportunity for Arbitrage trading.

To help this nascent and yet growing trading and broker community, Tradelab was established by Sandeep Mishra and Biplab Sinha, alumni of IIT Kharagpur . It is an online destination with features that help decision making quicker in the derivatives market. Tradelab was incubated by IIT Kharagpur and has received a seed funding of Rs 15 lakhs in December 2012, followed by a Series- A investment from Bengaluru-based venture capital Straddle Capital in early 2014.

Developing Tradelab

Tradelab was started with the belief that the Indian stock market needed something that could address the growing needs of the market. The site was established to be interactive, it also has data presented in simple graphical forms and enables order placement easy.

With the years of experience the team had in trading, they knew that succeeding in a volatile derivative market was not only about great backend research. It was also about being able to seize an opportunity within seconds before the offer changes or anybody else gets it. These insights are what lead the team to develop Tradelab. The platform also provides consultancy services to brokers in developing their existing software and to make it more user-friendly. Tradelab has more than a dozen clients across the country.

Tradelab and its team

The idea of creating an online destination for the trading community was conceptualized by Sandeep Mishra and Biplan Sinha in July 2012. They soon shared the idea with others – Satish Kumar, Rakesh Ranjan, Dilip Kumar Singh and Sanjeet Kumar. Taking this idea the six soon began working on Tradelab.

Rakesh Ranjan, the CFO and Co-founder of Tradelab, says:

We work hard to provide stock market brokers with highly advanced software and tools. All of us at Tradelab have very well defined thoughts. We know where we want to be. This clarity in thoughts makes our team building, including hiring very simple.

The journey and its challenges

While the team wanted to change the scenario of the trading industry in India, they found it difficult to get their first clients. “Our business development team had to knock all the doors in Kolkata to get projects. We gave our clients more than their expectation and sooner they started giving us big projects,” adds Rakesh.

Tradelab has five in-house products being developed by highly dedicated team of professionals. These products are targeting to cater to stock brokers. Tradelab aims to make trading hassle free and well informed by providing traders the software in-build with many advanced tools.

Addressable market and way forward

Tradelab launched its first product Pi in March this year. This product includes an integrated charting platform, a technical analysis, a high quality charting, quick order, market depth window, back test strategies before taking them live for trading alerts, expert advisor and "trade from graphs." In the next six months, the team hopes that Pi will reach a user base of 50,000, from their current base of 10,000. “Our other products are in alpha and beta phase of development,” adds Rakesh.

Currently present in Delhi, Kolkata, Mumbai and Bengaluru, Tradelab aims to provide complete solutions to stock brokers from 2014. They are also looking to expand to have a more global presence. They are looking for another round of funding later this year.