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Late last month, cricket superstar Kapil Dev created a splash on Twitter. His handle @therealkapildev started conversing with the other celebrities on the platform such as Sania Mirza, Srikkanth and Amitabh Bachchan. “Cricketer. Humanitarian. World Cup Winning Captain. Foodie. Dilwala,” his bio on the handle said.
As the famous black & white picture of his toothy laugh while receiving the Prudential Cup became a header photo, thousands of his fans started following him and Twitter did not waste time before giving him the blue tick, the mark of verification.
Dev started talking about #EKnayileague. Separately, there were reports about Subash Chandra’s Essel group trying to start a rival cricket league. Given Dev’s role in the earlier Chandra misadventure, the hearts of people like me went out to another set of young cricketers’ fledgling careers.
But, it turned out last week that cricketers are spared from playing this ‘nayi league.’ It is the investors, traders and women in the stock market who are going to play this one, called the Indian Trading League (ITL).
Rhyming nicely with IPL and launched at a time its popular cousin heads towards a gripping climax, ITL hopes to get stock traders and investors to participate in the stock market and make money. In addition to the money they make in the markets, the smartest of them all will also get to win a grand prize.
There are several sub-categories such as traders league, investors league, commodities league and women league. “The website leader boards shall display top performers across all league formats across all time frames,” according to the ITL website.
Adding: “True outperformer in the Traders league will be rewarded at end of the year an extraordinary prize of “Rupees 1 Crore”. However, in addition, there is opportunity to manage $1 Million, win 100 gms of Gold, Certifications.”
The participants enrolling require a minimum capital of Rs 25,000 and would be governed by applicable trading rules regarding margin calls, etc. The winner will be the one who generates the highest percentage net return or 'Absolute Return on Net Funds'.
One way of looking at this would be as an interesting marketing tool deployed by a rebranded broking outfit, out to win some market share in a fragmented market. ITL is promoted by a brokerage called Samco Securities, which has recently received funding from several entities, including Dev. Samco, formerly Samruddhi stock brokers, operates on a flat structure of Rs 20 per executed order. People joining the league and playing the market like a game would surely earn handsome brokerage for Samco. But, in a falling market, when volumes thin, will it be still ready to dole out Rs 1 crore on the basis of absolute returns? Or is this another bull-market wonder?
Such stock market games are not new to the Street. Some business news channels have tried it and so have media websites. A broker, which calls itself ‘technology driven’, resorting to this has already spurred murmurs in the very social media Samco and Dev took to kickstart the league.
“Is that even legal?” people have started asking on Twitter and seeking a close scrutiny by the regulator. Samco did not respond to an email seeking comments on the promoters and whether the regulator hasdpermitted the operation of such a league. Time will tell if this nayi league will chart a course better than Dev’s purani league.
