Prime Venture Partners Podcast

Safe Futures & Options (F&O) trading with Punch's Amit Dhakad

• Prime Venture Partners: Early Stage VC Fund • Season 1 • Episode 146

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In this exciting new episode, Shripati Acharyai spoke to Amit Dhakad -  a new-age entrepreneur building ‘Punch’, a single screen trading platform making options trading accessible and safe for young Indians.


Amit provides a nuanced explanation of the mechanics of futures and options specifically for retail and individual traders. He emphasizes the appeal of options trading due to its lower capital requirements, and how it serves as a gateway for wealth generation on a monthly basis. 


Listen to the podcast to learn more about:


0:00 - Options Trading Platform Journey

12:10 - What are Options? Why is it important?

18:10 - Should you invest in Options?

28:10 - Why is investing in the US better than India?

32:00 - Why are GenZ the best investors?


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Amit Dhakad:

I've done tech, but what about the business? Trading is still very daunting and it's still very, very risky. Options trading is an exciting space, or trading in general is an exciting space to be in. It's very hard to find a realized unmet need. You're hedging the volatility in the market which affects your business, basically, and the pricing of your products. Futures and options for retail largely make sense from a monthly wealth creation perspective? basically, can I buy aluminum features myself? Is that how it works? Hello and welcome to this episode of Prime Podcast. I'm Shripati Acharya with Prime, and my guest today is co-founder and CEO of Punch, A amit Dhakad. Punch is an innovative new options brokerage that is making it safe and easy for young Indians to participate in options trading. Welcome to the show, amit.

Amit Dhakad:

Thank you. Thank you, Sripati, for having me here.

Shripati Acharya:

All right, so let's just dive right into it. So Punt is an options trading platform. So what got you interested in the financial markets in the first place, and when was that?

Amit Dhakad:

Actually, for 28 years of my life life I was running away from financial markets with no interest. I wanted to be a surgeon, turned out to be an engineer and completely not interested in financial markets like. My interest lied in science, technology and all of those spaces. It turned out that, as an accident, my father needed something for about six months in the commodities market and, being a tech guy, it was really an interesting challenge to look at streaming millions of messages to you know sort of many, many concurrent users. And because of the tech interest and the time that I had in hand, I just happened to enter financial market and a year into it I got married and my wife, who's also my co-founder, turned out to be a financial market geek. She worked at a broker and she was a trader and hard code worked in the exchange for like five years.

Amit Dhakad:

So I think because of my father and because of my wife is where I am in this space and largely because I am a tech and a product person. My entire perspective in this entire like this is my ninth year in the financial markets now it's it's all been around understanding consumers and figuring out how tech and product design can actually benefit in this particular space. I stay in financial markets because it's just fascinating. The consumer segment is fascinating, the evolution in this space is fascinating and as a business, you can actually build a very, very sustainable and profitable business in this space. So I think it's just it's an accidental journey to get here, but I think the dots just connected if I look behind.

Shripati Acharya:

Well, I think financial markets are like the grease which really propels the economy. In one sense, it's very, very core and fundamental to any well-developed capital market. So you're interested in financial markets. What do you do then? You're helping your dad. You've gotten married. He really saying let's do something. Then what happens?

Amit Dhakad:

so I think, uh, it started off with, like, while all of these were catalyst, I think you can only go down the path if you're totally excited about the problem at hand. So for me, the tech challenge was like, really, really exciting. I think back in 2019, the Indian traders did not even have access to basic financial information, like a stock price, and I think I was very stunned, from coming from a technology background, that why are we so behind in technology here? And I saw an opportunity to do something that was very fascinating. So I think the tech helped me go and build and provide access to capital markets to like, not Indian traders, and I in my initial journey, I thought that, okay, maybe you know there'll be like 10-15,000 people who will be interested in a product like this and within a span like, I just could not believe myself that so many people could actually get access to it and needed access to it. So what exactly was the product? The product was very simple. It was just providing real-time stock market prices. It's so lame today, right, but in 2016 it just like it just went berserk because nobody had even access to that. Like they would need to open their desktop log into their broker terminal and actually see it.

Amit Dhakad:

It was that state that we were in 2016 and no player in the industry was really willing to actually invest in a in a mobile platform, because, I mean, trading, investing has always been a very serious business very desktop, four screen setups and all. But I came from a technology background and I had taken a bet in 2008 that mobile is going to be the future and I detached myself from web and desktop and all. So this 2016 was the turning point and then, I think, as one problem after the other, we really enjoyed the tech challenge which existed. And then in 2019 is when we started sort of seeing that, okay, you know, I've done tech, but what about business? Because I moved from a tech to started to think like a CEO and a business and I was like, okay, we just forgot about that.

Amit Dhakad:

Basically, broking is the way forward for us. Basically, that is where huge revenue pools lie. The impact that will be created will be larger. We'll be able to bring a lot more India to sort of participate in capital markets, and the Indian economy can only grow if people actually participate in the markets. Right, it's very, very important to it. So I think I found a purpose. I found a very interesting tech product problem to solve, um, and I love the capital markets and the trader segment particularly, so I think that's kind of.

Shripati Acharya:

Okay, so you went from providing real-time quotes to what product?

Amit Dhakad:

so it started off with real-time quotes, um, and after that we started getting a pull from the traders that they needed technical charts. Then they said that they need these tools and all of these were very interesting and exciting. So it became started with information and then went on to analysis, and then went on to decision making and went on to discovery, basically right. So we solved all of this piece of puzzle. Until about 2020, the product had like almost 25 percent of the trading population on it, really one of the you know great analytical tools basically available for decision making on a mobile device, on a simple mobile device, I think. So kind of that happened.

Amit Dhakad:

And then, once we had like almost half a million traders active on our platform in 2020 is when we decided that okay, now it's time to sort of get into execution, because all of this is happening, but execution is happening somewhere else, and we did initially try to stay an analysis and discovery platform and tie up with other brokerage firms to facilitate execution, but that miserably failed.

Amit Dhakad:

We didn't get the quality of execution that we wanted and to provide to our consumers, and we still felt that it's for the young india and the new generation of traders that are coming in.

Amit Dhakad:

The current existing products are just not enabling a lot of people to come in. Trading is still very daunting and it's still very, very risky, right, the perception is that and it is invariably everyone's trying to solve it with education, but we are a product design company, so we sort of felt that there is a product should be able to make options trading less daunting and a product should be able to get built-in safety into it, and if both of these can happen, options trading is an exciting space, or trading in general is an exciting space to be in. And we felt that, okay, you know, from a business perspective, it made sense to go into broking, and from a product perspective, we felt that there's a huge potential for us to do something so that the market can go from like a 4 million 8 million traders all the way to like sort of 80 100 million traders in the next in this decade, right? So I think that's kind of how the journey has been so that was the analytical platform.

Shripati Acharya:

Was market pulse? Yeah, right, and so how many users does market pulse have today?

Amit Dhakad:

um close to around 600 000 all organic all organic. Uh zero marketing spend zero, brand zero, nothing like it's. Uh, it's actually very interesting. Uh, 70 percent of our downloads come from the keyword market pulse, so that's kind of how that entire business has been built that's stunning.

Shripati Acharya:

So you went from doing real-time market codes to providing one of the most widely used analytical tools, and then to go even from there to execution, which provided the same ease of use and the same intuitive mobile interface to trade executions on options.

Amit Dhakad:

Yeah, so tell us about punch I think punch started about one and a half year back. At least the journey started one and a half year back now. We decided we'll be a broker first and we decided that product design is going to be something that we're going to solve the problem with right, because we knew where this industry is going and what it it sort of is missing basically, and I think from there the journey really started with understanding the consumers. Now in this space that we are in right which will largely also happen with a lot of startups in this decade it's very hard to find a realized unmet need right in our space.

Amit Dhakad:

There are already many billion dollar businesses many many brokers already existing, quite matured ones, young startups as well.

Amit Dhakad:

So I think, from that perspective, we needed to go really, really deep into the consumers psychographic analysis, understanding what do they really need, and not what the current segment needs, what people coming into this generation would need in this decade, basically right. And how would options trading go from like 4 million to like 80 million, basically. So I think, from that perspective, we were very clear that we needed to touch upon the core barriers to expansion. Now there are two key barriers one is of capital requirement and second is of access. Basically now, capital requirement something that's the regulator's job to kind of facilitate that, but when it comes to intermediaries like ourselves, it's access, basically, and we knew that access is going to be solved with good, intuitive product design, basically. So I think that's where it started off. Then it's a lot of consumer research, consumer understanding to be able to literally come up with a intuitive product which, hopefully, will take the industry in a different direction as far as trading platforms are concerned.

Shripati Acharya:

Basically so, I think, yeah, that's something. So let's you know, bubble up a little bit and provide for our listeners a little bit of context on how. On, what are options right? People understand what stocks are right. You buy a share, you sell a share. You buy, you know reliance industry or you buy, you know Aditya Birla group or whatever it is right and those we understand right. Right, what are options? Why is it even?

Amit Dhakad:

important, so I think fundamentally we should look at, like you know, the reason for creating options is generally hedging. That's essentially why it's sort of really created Futures and options are derivative products. Let me simplify it and help sort of the listeners understand what is futures and what is really options. So I think, think of it as the fundamental is a reliant stock right. That is what you buy, that is what you sell, basically. But at the end of the day, why are futures created? So let's take a commodity example and that's very easy for everybody to understand. Let's say you are manufacturing unit and you've got an order to build, let's say, iphones right and you're going to need aluminium to do it.

Amit Dhakad:

So now, today, you're going to crack or negotiate the deal, basically, right, but the aluminium shipment is going to come, let's say, a month down the line or two months down the line. You don't know what the price of aluminium will be a month down the line or two months down the line. How can you decide the the margin today? How can you decide the cost price today, right? So what you end up doing that's why futures are created so what you end up doing basically is you actually buy aluminum at a future price, basically, and that price enables you to sort of lock in your raw material price, basically so that you are able to predictably control your margins. And then, right.

Amit Dhakad:

So then what happens is a month down the line, when the aluminum shipment comes in, basically the future contracts that you have bought, right, you sell those and you get this shipment. It kind of settles it out, basically. So what this fundamentally means is you're hedging the volatility in the market which affects your business, basically, and the pricing of your products. That's what derivatives are built for, that's what futures is built for, that's what options is built for, largely right.

Shripati Acharya:

So that's a very fundamental role in business, because Very, very fundamental it is removing the uncertainty associated with price movements out in the future. In your particular case, you're talking about aluminum. You're buying for 100 rupees. You want to put in a margin on top of it, a 20 rupees of margin. But if suppose, the price of aluminum goes down to 150, it's a big problem. So you go ahead and buy a futures contract which locks in the price that in three months from now I'm going to buy aluminum at 100. And you of course pay something for it. And that way, whatever be the price of aluminum, you're at least guaranteed no more than 100. So that's what it is.

Amit Dhakad:

I think for the listener the mechanics are it gets into a complicated zone. It's very simple. I have seen that. Okay, the price of aluminum is 100 for me today it gets locked in at 100. For you, it doesn't matter if the world moves left or it moves right. For you, the price of aluminum is locked at 100. That gives predictability. You can't control the actual underlying price, basically, but through futures and options you will be able to control and lock in your price basically, that's what this essentially allows you to do so then let's translate you to what happens in the market, specifically are am I as a retail person?

Shripati Acharya:

can I buy aluminum futures myself? Is that how it?

Amit Dhakad:

works yes, absolutely so. To buy futures or to buy options, you don't really need to have commitment in the physical stock, right? So it's not like you need to have an aluminum container shipping to you to be able to buy your futures. It does not really work that way, right? Yeah, so ultimately, hedging right is largely for companies, businesses and also for large institutions who are sort of taking a large bet in a particular portfolio. And then sometimes you have a large portfolio but you know that there is a certain event that's going to happen, that's going to shake the market. So you take opposite positions, you take positions in different instruments, you move your money around to be able to hedge your risks. Largely, right, that's where all of this happens. But as far as retail participation is concerned, hedging isn't the reason why they are there in the market. That's not sort of what is really happening now.

Amit Dhakad:

When retail is participating in the market, right, they are fundamentally sort of coming in with the intent not of hedging, with the intent of creating wealth period. Right, businesses are getting in and getting into derivatives with the intent to sort of hedge institutions are getting in as part of their overall strategy to be able to sort of, you know, hedge or create wealth, whatever it is, but when it comes to retail, they're purely coming in from the perspective of generating wealth. Now, when it comes to retail traders, the opportunities are many. You can generate wealth using fixed deposit, you can generate wealth using mutual funds. You can do it via stocks, you can do it via futures, you can do it via options. Now, how does a retail trader really decide this? There are three primary criteria. One capital requirement. Second is the risk I'm willing to take and the reward that I'm looking for. So let's say you're a very risk averse person and you've got a lakh rupees and you're okay with the six, seven percent reward on an annual basis.

Amit Dhakad:

Futures oh sorry, fd is the right way to go about it. If you're like oh no, I want to like get 15 return, basically, but I don't really want to like lose this capital, I'm okay to lose by 10, then you'll choose mutual funds, basically. Uh, similarly, if somebody is very enthusiastic and wants to like get that 20, 25 percent that they get into stocks, basically, but with mutual fund, with stocks, the return that you get, the capital requirement is very high right now. In futures also, the capital requirement is higher. But in options, the capital requirement reduces basically.

Amit Dhakad:

Now, why is that right? Because it's a derivative contract and, particularly in India, you are actually paying for just the option premium. Now I don't want to go too much into detail, but let's say, for example, the price of a share is thousand rupees, the option premium could even be five rupees, it could be even 50 rupees, it could even be 100 rupees, right? So now what's happening here? Let's say you actually are coming in and you're like okay, I want to put in one lakh rupees into reliance and I want to actually, I think reliance is going to go up over the next one year by five percent go for stocks, buy the stock, keep it for yourself, and that's pretty much it.

Amit Dhakad:

However, if you think that okay, no, I'm coming in and I think that reliance is going to go up in the next 30 days in a particular like 5-10%, then maybe you can do cash and then you'll need 1 lakh rupees. But you can take that same thesis and actually choose options and your capital requirement will drop down to maybe 10 000, right? So the risk reward ratios keep differing. Now what ends up happening basically is, in mutual funds you lose maximum 5, 10, 15, 20 capital right and over a long period of time. But in options you can put in 10 000 and all of that can go to zero by the time the contract expires which could just be a week or a month at max, basically.

Amit Dhakad:

So I think it's all about the capital requirement, the risk that you're willing to take, the reward that you need in return, basically, and how are you thinking about wealth creation? Are you thinking about wealth creation from a tenure perspective? Are you thinking about wealth creation from your perspective, or are you thinking about wealth creation from a tenure perspective? Are you thinking about wealth creation from your perspective, or are you thinking about it from a month perspective? Futures and options for retail largely make sense from a monthly wealth creation perspective, basically, as opposed to long term.

Shripati Acharya:

Fair enough. And of course, as you mentioned, that with the opportunity for high gains comes the commensurate downside that you might actually do a very large portion up to 100% of your invested capital Understood. So what is the opportunity you saw when you looked at this scenario and said, well, we actually have the opportunity to start a company in this space. And what was it in your mind which was actually the unmet need here, or maybe even a latent unmet need, which is the consumer hasn't articulated, but it's out there?

Amit Dhakad:

fair. I think access was there right and capital requirement was also dropping, so a lot more people were able to come in and participate in trading right, which we have seen over the last four years. There's been a whole propulsion of people coming in actually trading right, largely facilitated by both of these factors. However, options trading is daunting and options trading is risky still exists, which means that it's a. As compared to mutual funds and stocks, this is a high speed activity.

Amit Dhakad:

Basically where you're going to make money fast and you're going to lose money fast and invariably, we all know that 99 people actually don't end up making sufficient capital, basically right. So I think we just knew that there is this big problem, basically right. So from a from a broker's perspective, like what is our job? We are intermediaries, right, and for us it is about access. So now, while access is provided, what is there to solve? More now, right, but this problem still exists. There is enough education out there not really helping, right?

Amit Dhakad:

We were in the analysis space, informed decision making space. Can we help people make better decisions, better informed decisions? We have tried that as well. Didn't change much. So many players have tried, but the statistics don't change.

Amit Dhakad:

So in that sense, we knew that there is still a very big problem of why options trading is so daunting for somebody to get into and why is it so risky, basically. So we tried to understand these two problems and today we are at that point where we are like, okay, we are going to work for the next few years to actually be able to make options trading less complicated, basically and through product design, not through education and be able to ensure that people can actually do this fast paced trading with safety on, basically Right. So you get substantial time to stay in the market. You can actually learn about the market because you'll have to be in the market to learn. There's no other way. Basically, but if you could actually limit the losses that you make, you can increase the longevity of how you can stay in the market. Basically, then in six months, a year, year and a half, you can get to a place where you actually start understanding the pulse of what this is, how to go about it, what is working for you, basically right, and I think that is the big opportunity that we see.

Amit Dhakad:

So from all our consumer insights and research and everything that we've done, we've understood that people who stay in options trading have gone through a lot of heartburn and a lot of burns generally to get to a point where they can stay in the market.

Amit Dhakad:

So there is a clear problem which means that the journey of the trader in that zero to six months, zero to one year is very hard. They don't really have a clear path, they don't know how to go about it. They burn their hands, they are getting their emotions in the way and, while a lot of education exists, platforms aren't helping them do that. So I think we clearly see that there is a big problem there and if we can solve and address that, I think we can significantly sort of increase the participation of people in the market, where a lot more people should be able to come into this to participate, try their hand with it and actually do it safely, as opposed to just, like you know, burning their hands basically. So I think there is there is a very big role of product design to be played here.

Shripati Acharya:

By safely do you mean, amit, here, that they have a certain point of view about the kind of and the level of risk which they are comfortable taking and they shouldn't inadvertently end up taking a higher risk than what they intended. Is that how you're thinking about safety, or or is there more to it.

Amit Dhakad:

So I think we should look at safety very simply in this manner where, if I look at an analogy, right like it's like you may want to drive at 100 kilometers an hour or 150 kilometers hour or 20 kilometers an hour, but you need to have a seat belt on and you need airbags and you need your abs systems right, you need all of these safety things, otherwise you're going to end up with a crash.

Amit Dhakad:

I think what people end up doing is they sit in the car, they don't do any of this and they just put their foot on the pedal and they run really fast and they end up crashing. Basically, right, and largely it happens because because of emotions which we all sort of understand. But it also happens because of emotions which we all sort of understand. But it also happens because of complete lack of like what to do basically, and in that impulse of what they see in the market, overconfidence, a lot of these emotions. So I think there is a role for a product to play, see education. A lot of people have done, and every trader you speak to they also know that they should be doing this, but it does not work right.

Amit Dhakad:

So I think there is a role for somebody to come in and be able to say that, okay, you drive, but the seatbelt, the ABS, the airbags, all of these things are just automated, they're just there like we'll take care of it, basically so that you're safe.

Amit Dhakad:

Largely right, so I think. And then there are certain guard rules also right, like. So I think fundamentally, people learn about safety only after burning their hands multiple times, when they go in the search to see how to do it safely, how to not burn their hands, because they come in with overconfidence and with aggression and it's like, okay, I'm just gonna do it, my friend could do it, so I'll do it. And then you burn your hands couple of times and then you realize that, okay, now I should sort of do it this way. So I think we could fundamentally sort of built in safety and ease, and if you do the two together, I think people would not like take six, nine months to figure out how to do things right. They would just be able to sit in the car for the first time, put in the seat belt, have the abs, have the airbags and then drive safely so very good.

Shripati Acharya:

So what the next four points? So the product is out in the market, yeah, right now you can download, yes, absolutely the product and then do all the kyc and all that good stuff, and then uh, and then you can use it. So, uh, what next? Uh for, uh, for punch, how are you thinking not just, maybe for even punch standpoint, I think I should say, uh, your views on the markets like, uh, you know, where do you think this is going?

Amit Dhakad:

so I think, from a capital market perspective, we are just getting started. I think, right like if you look at US, if you look at China, if you look at Brazil, the participation in capital markets is huge. Right and, as I mentioned earlier, right like, there are three aspects basically, actually two fundamentally there is capital requirement and second is avenues to invest or trade in.

Shripati Acharya:

Capital requirement, just to clarify. You mean the amount of capital that the user has to bring in. The user has to deploy.

Amit Dhakad:

So if you look at in the US, the capital requirement to participate is lower I see Like fractional shares, for example and capital available is lower. I see, right, like fractional shares for example, right and capital available is higher Right. And then the avenues to invest in are many, many different products. Variety of products exist. Complex products exist out there for you to invest or trade in, for that matter. Right Like there are water futures in the US.

Shripati Acharya:

Right, like it's crazy, right. Which means exactly what is the water future, the cost of water?

Amit Dhakad:

yeah, you're betting on water and water scarcity in the future and stuff like that very complex products like that.

Prime Venture Partners:

India doesn't have that.

Amit Dhakad:

So in India the capital requirement is very high. The capital available disposable income with people is lower as an entire population, india population and then the avenues to invest in are very limited. There's mutual funds, there's stocks and there's options, and that's it. In fact, in options we have Almost eight times more turnover than US. It's amazing, right? Nse exchange as an exchange is the highest volume of option turnover contracts happening across the world, right? But there are only two which constitute almost 70 to 80% of the volume. Two indices, that's it right.

Amit Dhakad:

So it's huge number of this thing, but the concentration is very, very high. So the diversity in products is is missing, right, and we're getting started now. So now, I think, over this decade, what we will see is bond markets will come in, alternative investments come in. Secondary uh, uh, investing in secondary shares in private companies could come in. Investing in us markets could come in, right, um, and maybe even options for regular equities right, absolutely, they do exist. But then there are guardrails, right, even like, for example, indian market is controlled by like 50 to 100 companies.

Shripati Acharya:

Right, like top 15 companies could move the stock market, meaning that the index participation is very high, very high and like if a reliance goes down.

Amit Dhakad:

10 the the stock market, meaning that the index participation is very high very high and like if a reliance goes down 10, the whole stock market can move a bit right so it's from that perspective.

Amit Dhakad:

So I think, as the number of companies increase, as the number of avenues for people to invest in and trade in increase, as the capital of disposable income for people start increasing and as the capital requirements which is for people start increasing and as the capital requirements, which is happening invariably, these are all tailwinds in this right. So I think over this decade we will see this 10 participation go all the way to 40, 50 participation. It will invariably happen because all of these four variables are changing very rapidly, evolving very, very fast, and the interest to be in capital market exists. Now the bigger thing is, apart from capital market, the traditional ways of generating wealth, which is real estate and gold, are very high in capital requirement which the young generation won't have.

Amit Dhakad:

So these are going to be the avenues to sort of stock market is. I think we're just getting started. We have seen a very big influx in the last four years but unfortunately the influx has happened like. I think the maturity will come in in the economy when people start coming in for the right reasons. I think a lot of people, and especially the millennials, the gen x and the last two decades, a lot of people and a lot of people that came in also right, come in with a very frivolous mindset in the sense of I'll put in something and I'll get something in return.

Amit Dhakad:

I think that narrative changing and which is changing with the Gen Z especially. Basically, I think they are less risk averse. They are more pragmatic about what they are expecting out of the market. They're not looking for Lamborghinis. They're not looking for, like, retiring out of the stock market. They understand it's a side hustle. They're not willing to give up their jobs to actually get into, like investing or trading right.

Amit Dhakad:

They understand that they don't want to put everything into one thing. They want to make sure that they're diversifying. So they're putting it into stock mutual funds, they'll put it into stocks, they'll put it into trading. They'll do crypto as well, they do gold as well. They want to diversify, basically right, and in general they are learning about the market, getting educated and making very informed decisions, and they don't want quick bucks and return. They are patient about learning this as a skill, basically, which I think will fundamentally shape the indian capital market. So the regulators doing a great, fantastic job with building safety and yet bringing openness into the market. The regulators are moving from very distribution sales oriented organizations to product organizations, basically, and the consumers getting more pragmatic and more aware and more informed, basically, and as the sort of foundation of the market changes with capital requirement and with avenues to invest in with a variety of products. I think we are just ripe for the next 10 years for capital market participation in India to just blow out of proportion.

Shripati Acharya:

So what you're saying, Amit, here is that we are going to see more instruments available, I mean the options itself. You'll probably have a lot more derivatives available there, in terms of Not just derivatives.

Amit Dhakad:

Just the avenues to invest in, like avenues to invest in debt market, the avenue to invest in private companies. The avenues to invest in like to avenues to invest in debt market. The avenue to invest in private companies. The avenues to invest in more stocks, for that matter, more ipos happening. Basically, like today, when an ipo happens, you actually just cross your fingers and pray you will get one and you don't end up getting it right. That's the problem. Right?

Shripati Acharya:

so I think that is access right, that is a new problem supply mismatch because the demand for getting these equities and ipo markets is much higher than what the supply is.

Amit Dhakad:

Yeah, and if somebody has like just three thousand rupees disposable income in a month, it's just very hard.

Amit Dhakad:

It makes no sense, like I mean you put in three thousand rupees in a mutual fund and you're like, okay, that's all what could show up basically. So I think the avenues will open up and more opportunities will happen. Like a classic example is the corporate bond market right? The minimum face value was about 1 lakh rupees, right? So we recently changed that to 10,000. So now that's one-tenth the requirement, which means now with 10,000 rupees I can sort of get into this particular space, right? Otherwise I could not. So I think these are very important changes. So more variety of options to sort of invest in and trade in and at the same time, lower capital requirement, which has fundamentally changed the game.

Shripati Acharya:

So you're saying that from a regulator side, a lot of tailwinds to basically increase the level of participation in the capital markets and, of course, a lot more instruments getting into the capital markets and avenues for people to invest in it just creates a lot of opportunities for startups like yourselves to come in and help be the preferred option for the user. So that's really helpful. So let me just ask you one, perhaps a closing question here, which is that now you have been doing this you said since 2016,. So like eight years. So what is it that you know now that you wish you knew then before you started? If you were to tell Amit Dhaka in 2016, now that you wish you knew then before you started, if you were to tell you know Amit Dhaka after 2016, you know a few things as he embarked on his journey in financial markets and startups and products what would you say?

Amit Dhakad:

Fundamentally, I think if I had to look back, I would actually in 2016,.

Amit Dhakad:

I would tell myself that I should have thought about business right uh, I think I thought about tech and I got super excited with it and I focused very, very strong because I was a tech guy right at the end of the day and I really cracked very hard tech problems.

Amit Dhakad:

But I think if I had started my broking journey in 2016, I would have built a very large business and, at the same time, I would have built a very large business and, at the same time, I would have created a greater impact than what I did actually right. So I think, fundamentally for every entrepreneur, I think what's important specifically when you're coming into fintech, I think one will need to figure out monetization very, very soon, very soon. I think leaving monetization to a very later point in time is not going to be a good idea, because the market is going to take time to sort of expand. It's still shallow markets. It'll still sort of it'll expand over the next 10 years, but I think the monetization possibilities to build a very large business are very few. Right, you can either be an exchange, you can either be a broker, you can either be a mutual fund house or you could be a lender.

Amit Dhakad:

There isn't anything beyond these four.

Amit Dhakad:

So I think if, in 2016, I didn't think just about solving a tech problem, but I thought that, okay, how am I going to create a very large business, right, how am I going to create a very large outcome for the industry, for shareholders, for for myself, I would have taken a completely different direction. I would have thought very differently, basically, and I would have picked up the same product in the design and the tech problem, because that's that's who I am at the heart, but I would have not chosen the analysis and information part. I would have done that, but I would have started execution back then in 2016. So I think, for all entrepreneurs, I think the thing really is to be able to, you know, sort of go beyond what they are just passionate for problem solving is and starting to ask themselves that question that, ok, where do you want to be, like five years from now? And I didn't ask myself that question in 2016.

Amit Dhakad:

Going to be like five years from now? And I didn't ask myself that question in 2016. I was just excited to take one step, then the second step and then the third step. Uh, only to ask myself that question in 2019 right so I.

Amit Dhakad:

I would have asked myself that question in 2016 well, I think that's a uh, very honest answer.

Shripati Acharya:

uh, amit, uh, but you asked it ultimately and Punch was the answer. So all the best, good luck with the journey for Punch and thank you for being with us today at Prime Podcast.

Prime Venture Partners:

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