Market Simplified is a Leader in crafting mobile solutions for financial services institutions across the globe. The move from just ‘Connecting the Channels’ to‘Engineering Experiences’ is clearly becoming the way to the future. We have perhaps deployed the largest mobility platform assisting large financial institutions such as Kotak,Options Express, Maybank – KIM ENG, The National stock exchange of India (NSE) etc.. across the globe to go mobile. Our focus is on compelling UX and value added tools that has been instrumental in providing impetus to our Customer’s revenue enhancement and their acquisition plans. We engage, innovate & co-create with all our clients and believe in building mobile solutions that work for their business, brand or campaign.
Venkat , way back in 2006, during his extensive travel schedules across Asia Pacific, used to meet a lot of individual investors like himself. He found Institutional investors to be empowered but retail investors were not. He also realized that mobile was getting powerful and mobile will be an integral part of life of individuals in the next five to ten years. To harness the power of mobile, he wanted to synthesize all of these in one platform and give information, analytics, execution capabilities from anywhere at any-time, post investment monitoring on a single platform, in the comfort of the palm of the investors(smart phones) With this value proposition, his initial business plan was to buy data from multiple sources and convert into plain English understandable by Retail Investors. He, wanted to get thought leaders talking on the platform and also brokers who will execute the trade and this will simplify the trade industry using technology. He realized that the US market is ripe to launch, as the technology play was high and he bought news feed, data and then launched market simplified in the US in 2007.
In 2008 , their first brokerage on board, One of the largest Brokerage in USA were on the look out for outside sources to bring the investors to trade on their platform. Venkat took the API’s from them that allowed integration of the brokerage platform with his core engine where individuals can trade and also share 10% revenue with the platform on every trade. With this first customer success, they decided to take it to the other customers. Since there were no appstores at that point in time, they had a couple of market places where people could download the trading application and he thought this will go viral but realized that they could not mobilize the funds to be able to get a mini Bloomberg like terminal in every investors hands and hence found the retail investor game to be a deep pocket game. He decided to convert his play to B2B from B2C and began targeting broker partners. He began writing to other brokerages and asked for the same APIs that his Intial client had given him and assured that they will give the same kind of power of mobility in the hands of the brokerages customers. The brokerages can now white label this product and can market it with their clients and they don’t have to pay for any initial investment and all they have to is pay a $ per trade. This was compounded by another leading brokerage, . Launching their mobility solution which worked on palm, Blackberry and Windows and spent USD 2 Mn in the super bowl to announce their launch creating a competitive advantage for themselves thereby forcing the other brokers had to follow suit or lose their customers to this brokerage. Venkat approached all the other brokerage firms and told them that they would not have to spend time/effort/money in creating a new platform for themselves but they can take this private labeled platform with no initial investment and pay only on transaction and began acquiring customers.
They began their marketing on how the brokerages can leverage their knowledge of research and diversified into stock and trading and then expanded first to UK and then to India. In India , mobile trading was not allowed at that point in time. They also wrote the first white paper on mobile security and why it is good to allow mobile trading in Indiaand they began lobbying with SEBI and had provided many reference documents, on the same. . SEBI finally opened up mobile trading in India. They invested ahead and launched their first platform with Kotak Securities when the law came out.
Venkat ‘s advice to startups draws from his inspiration from Wayne Gretzky – a famous ice hockey player who says “ A good hockey player plays where the puck is. A great hockey player plays where the puck is going to be”. He extrapolates and says that a founder should understand where the market would move in the future and should play accordingly thus creating a space for oneself even before the market opens up.
There are around 800 brokerages are running on a platform called “NOW” and that platform is powered by MS. Many leading trading platforms are running on MS. Market simplified (www.marketsimplified.com) has about 3 million plus end consumers using its platform on a daily basis across the globe
