Ratan Tata and Tiger Global backed Upstox, an Indian wealth-tech firm, is hopeful of achieving “strongly profitable” growth this fiscal, expecting to record its first full year of profits on the back of increase in user base from the recently-launched ‘Upstox Invest’ module in its existing app, its Co-Founder and CEO Ravi Kumar has said.
This online broker, which now has about 1.15 crore users (mostly traders) on its platform, aims to add at least 100 million users (primarily long-term investors) in the next five to seven years, Kumar told businessline.
Upstox, which got this name from a rebranding exercise undertaken in 2016, had in 2022-23 achieved break-even and recorded a total revenue of about ₹1,000 crore.
“In FY23, we achieved break even and in the current fiscal we are going to be strongly profitable,” Kumar said.
With strong unit economics, the last two quarters of fiscal 2022-23 was cash-flow positive for Upstox, he said.
“Our mission at Upstox Invest is to get 100 million people in the next five-seven years to invest in the growth of India. This is a realistic target. Our mission is to get millions of investors to invest in the right way without any misselling and help create long-term wealth.”
Upstox Invest was launched a few weeks ago. It is for long-term investors with ability to invest in equity, MF, sovereign gold bonds, digital gold receipts , bank FDs etc,” Kumar said.
Targeting young India
Kavita Subramanian, Co-founder of Upstox, said, “A part of our job at Upstox is to make the act of investing a little more engaging, fun and enjoyable so that young India gets attracted to it.” Close to 70 per cent plus of Upstox customer base is below 35 years, she added.
She said that Upstox wants to position itself as a go-to platform for “trusted investment advice”.
Kumar highlighted that just as lot of wealth creation in the US happened amongst investment platforms and brokerages, a very similar thing will happen in India as well. “Younger people in India connect easily with more fintech players these days,” he added.
Kumar said that Upstox believes that digital is way safer than paper-based document. “Digitisation journey in India is incredible. Our business has been able to benefit from that,” he said.