This start-up helps young stock market investors

Today, Tavaga announced seed funding from angel investors through Tracxn Syndicate, reports Tech in Asia

When Ravinath Dasika wanted to invest his personal savings in the stock market, he was caught between a rock and a hard place. He thought mutual funds overcharge for a one-size-fits-all product. On the other hand, professional portfolio managers would not handle his level of investment.

As a finance professional, Ravinath felt there should be more intelligent options for retail investors in the internet age. So he started building Tavaga, a platform to connect investors with portfolio managers, earlier this year. Today the Mumbai-based start-up announced seed funding from angel investors through Tracxn Syndicate. The amount was not disclosed.

“There was a clear gap in the market which led to the conception of Tavaga,” says Ravinath, an Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) grad with an MBA from London Business School. Ravinath was a portfolio manager for Deutsche Bank.

“What we have noticed is that a lot of young people do not understand how the markets work, how mutual funds or different financial products work, and so they find it difficult to make use of them for their savings,” Ravinath tells Tech in Asia.
 

Keeping in mind its core target group of 25 to 35-year-olds, Tavaga wants to gamify the process of risk assessment and investment decision-making. “Their dashboard has goals and not mutual funds, fixed deposits, or things like that. Their progress will be charted on how far they have gone towards their goals, and not in terms of how many percentage points their portfolio has changed,” says Ravinath.
 

Tavaga is currently testing the first release of the product with customers who have invested a collective $750,000. A December launch is planned.

This is an excerpt from Tech in Asia. You can read the full article here.