In September last year, 20-year-old Lalit Pathare discovered the share markets. The occasion was a month-long pilot project conducted by securities depository NSDL that taught B.Com students how to create demat accounts, navigate the KYC process and open the door to the capital markets.
Market ka EklavyaManoj Sathe, Vice-President, National Securities Depository, says the project — named Market ka Eklavya — has been designed in the form of a contest to help students get to really learn what a trading platform is like, the research required before investing and what goes into making earning profits.
During his research, Lalit took a liking to capital goods, particularly power stocks. He poured over company websites, looked at their price charts on the BSE and read stock-related news on future projects that his chosen companies had planned. He borrowed ₹500 from his parents, bought a few shares each in the companies he liked, and created his first portfolio.
The contest at ML Dahanukar College of Commerce, where Lalit was a student, was one of the two which NSDL piloted last year as part of its investor awareness programmes.
“We need to educate the younger generation by giving them some hands-on experience. After seminars, students tend to forget all they learnt. But this way, they understand how to read the market,” Sathe adds.
At the end of the contest period, participants are judged not just on the profits they make but the research that went into their stock selection.
NSDL plans to expand the initiative to colleges nationwide by the end of the academic year.
GV Nageswara Rao, MD and CEO, NSDL, says, “Usually, we go to savers (for investor programmes). But we realised that if we catch people even before they start earning, there is much more chance for them becoming active investors.”
This is what Lalit and his 30-odd classmates who competed with him are doing. A year since the contest ended, he is now a graduate, works with a city-based BPO and is still holding on to the stocks he had bought. All of them have appreciated by between ₹10 and ₹30.
Lalit says he plans to invest more as soon as he has enough of his salary saved up. Winning the Market ka Eklavya contest was unexpected too. And then there is his winner’s prize, a Philips home theatre, probably his biggest surprise yet.