Ravi Kumar, the CEO and founder of Upstox, one of India's fastest-growing investment platform, was brought up in the US and was interested in stock market from a very early age. Upstox CEO Ravi Kumar used to trade in stocks from the age of 16.
Ravi Kumar completed his Computer Science degree from the University of California-Irvine and started working at Thinkorswim trading platform, a flagship of TD Ameritrade. The job was paying him well but he decided to launch his own business and soon he and his brother Raghu started an automated proprietary trading desk in Chicago. The business did well but then recession struck the US in 2008 and the market crash forced Ravi Kumar to shift his focus to India.
In 2009, Ravi Kumar along with Shrini Viswanath and Kavitha Subramanian, co-founded Upstox (the then RKSV securities). The idea behind Upstox was to provide an investment opportunity platform to retail traders and investors in India.
Upstox is currently the second-largest stock brokerage firm in India. The success of Upstox can be gauged from the fact that billionaire investor Ratan Tata is also an investor in the company.
“When we look at an average Indian customer today, we see a massive gap — on the trading and investment front, the ease of use, and just managing their finances overall. So we see this as an opportunity to help them invest their wealth in a better way,” Ravi Kumar once said in an interview.
In order to establish itself as a company which has a diversified customer base, Upstox has collaborated with the 2023 Indian Premier League too. The net worth of Upstox is USD 3.4 billion, which means the company is now valued more than Zerodha and Groww.
With the ongoing upward socio-economic mobility of Indians, it is evident that sound financial management practices are going mainstream in Indian society. As a result, India looks set to embark on a path of becoming a hub of the fintech revolution. An encouraging environment of financial education and investment, coupled with India’s aspirational demography will play an enabling role in that reality.
