Interviewing the founder of LearnApp: Mr Prateek Singh
Prateek Singh started trading in markets when he was just 17 years old. Under the guidance of his father, he has now become a seasoned investor. During the course of time, he also founded four startups namely Tradersaint, TradeAcademy, and MarketScientist which were around educating the investors about markets and investing. LearnApp is the latest venture launched by Prateek Singh in 2018.
“I don’t have a 10th or a 12th certificate.” — Prateek Singh.
Let’s start by talking about your background. I have read that you did not attend college. Is it true? If so, what were you doing in the four-five years when other 17- year-olds were in college?
Prateek: I am actually not proud that I did not do that because everyone needs a college education. I think the chances of one doing well in life without a college education dramatically decreases. So everyone needs that and it’s kind of odd that I did not complete college. I had studied abroad all my life and when we came to India, I missed a year or so. So I was born in Abu Dhabi, studied in Africa, Singapore, Malaysia and when I came back to India, they asked me to repeat two years and I was not willing to do that. So forget about college, I could not go above the primary level. I don’t have a 10th or a 12th certificate. Dad opened an account with ICCI direct and we started to trade. My first trade was in a company called Milkfood. I earned 50 paise on the share and only realized later that the stamp duty etc ate into my profit. I never stopped since then, just continued learning to trade throughout.
The retail participation of Indians in the capital markets is less than 2%. Providing financial education to Indians to increase this retail participation is much in focus now. Examples being Varsity, Learnapp, Finception, among others. What impact do you think such platforms are having?
Prateek: It is inevitable for everyone in India to learn to start investing in the markets. If you look at foreign countries like the US or Europe, over 40% of people invest because they somewhat understand the market. If you look at your generation or my generation, it is the first generation where we have opportunities. Think about it. When our parents were in the markets, they just wanted a job. Today, we have an option to leave our jobs and go somewhere else. We have far more opportunities which means we also have higher disposable income, which means you want to invest. Our parents did not have this luxury. And this throughout the generation and you can track this on disposable income which is quantitatively proven. And it is possible for this 2% number to grow to 15–20% and education is where you start. Either you start from school/college or LearnApp!
Can you explain to a first-time audience hearing about LearnApp, what LearnApp is?
Prateek: So LearnApp is simple. Why don’t you learn from a practitioner rather than a trainer/professor? We have people who actually manage billions of dollars and who teach. But there is something odd. We have people who manage mutual funds, hedge funds and they teach on LearnApp. The thing is if you learn from these people, you’ll notice what they do is very simple and they are just repeating it again and again on a larger scale. It is not necessarily complicated. So what LearnApp is really doing is three things: a) we get a leader to come and teach who is an actual practitioner, b) it’s shot like a movie, super interesting c) it costs only Rs 500 to access 100 courses which are very affordable.
“A start-up is basically a giant experiment. No one knows whether it is going to work except the founders. When you are doing so many experiments, you need to have a team who knows you well and trusts you.” — Prateek Singh.
The courses on LearnApp have senior executives and top-notch people in their domains as mentors. For example Mr R Gopalakrishnan, Executive Director of Tata Sons or Mrs Radhika Gupta, CEO Edelweiss AMC. How do you manage to get them on-board? And is this a differentiating factor?
Prateek: Yes, it is. Most ed-tech firms in India focus either on school or the technology industry. We are the only ones focussing on finance, money and business. Why not learn from a GoIbibo founder Ashish Kashyap on how he got his first million users? We are like an insight platform, not really an education platform. You get insights from these people and then learn. Talking about how we get them on-board, I think once you reach a point in life, you will want to make a change and everyone wants to do something for education. So we provide that giving back to society platform for these senior executives who are willing to share their insights. We can’t bring them on-board with money, they do it out of love.
Your colleague Mr Sohail Alam previously worked at Upstox. So, how did the team come along for LearnApp? While we are at this, can you emphasize the importance of having a solid and diversified team while one is starting up?
Prateek: So one thing for a team is that they need to trust each other and that is very difficult to do beyond the first six months of the start-up. A start-up is basically a giant experiment. No one knows whether it is going to work except the founders. For example: at Trade Academy and Trader Saint we did multiple workshops, made the platform free and then paid, made live classes and then recorded. I have been in this field for such a long time that I have tried everything. When you are doing so many experiments, you need to have a team who knows you well and trusts you. You have fun and learn from each other. There is no ego and a diversified team is better because you play on each other’s strengths. Swati is the most qualified person after Sohail in the company. She is an MBA, I am nothing. When it comes to driving the work, she is the one. For technology, there is no one better than Sohail. He has built the entire LearnApp single-handedly. So we have only two people in the tech team. Supriya for the front-end and Sohail on the back end while Ankur handles all the video production, operations and all things visual.
The model followed by LearApp is that of a Netflix one. I have opted for the three-month plan for Rs 1770. Can you throw some light on the business model and how have the revenues been?
Prateek: Sure. Based on all the experiments we have done, what we really needed to do is the 10X formula. Basically whatever is in the market, into 10X it. The cost of each course is 30000. What is 10 times cheaper than that? That’s 3000 a course. To make it even more affordable, we finally came up with the Rs 500 model. Because it’s a subscription model, we can’t sell something and run away. It’s such an affordable subscription that everyone can afford it and if it’s bad, people will tweet the hell out of it. We have such nice reviews from thousands of people which means we are on the right track. So the subscription model helped us to make really good content because people openly gave good and bad reviews. Otherwise, I feel if people pay 1 lakh for a course, just out of guilt they say the course was good because no one wants to feel that they were ripped off. So the subscription model works as people keep coming back every week and it’s working so far.
“Nithin Kamath is very calm. I feel even if a storm happens he’ll remain calm and I am trying to learn that as well. So when we don’t get subscriptions, I shouldn’t blow my head!” — Prateek Singh.
Mr Nithin Kamath of Zerodha has been a backer of LearnApp. Their investment/incubator arm Rainmatter has early investments in LearnApp. Can you share how this has helped and your relations with Nithin Kamath?
Prateek: So I have known Nithin for a while since I had met him 4–5 years ago. When I reached out to him saying we want to build an education platform, he was very nice to say that they will happily back us. And of course, I feel he is a phenomenal entrepreneur. So if anything, I get to learn a lot about how he built a company without any backers. And I am sure everyone would have doubted him when he started. So Nithin is very calm. I feel even if a storm happens he’ll remain calm and I am trying to learn that as well. So when we don’t get subscriptions, I shouldn’t blow my head!
LearnApp clocked 1.18 Crores in revenue in its first 8 months of launch. Did you spend anything on marketing, or was it through Zerodha’s reach that you achieved this?
Prateek: Zerodha actually doesn’t push LearnApp yet officially. What will happen now is we’ll create some basic courses and people will take those courses. I think that’s when the push will really help. Generally, I feel we have grown organically. So we don’t do any ads. We do something called a retarget for whoever visits our site. We reach people through the course mentors who would post about us and their followers would then find about LearnApp. So we don’t spend anything on acquisitions, so 100% of our reach is either direct or organic.
What’s your views on a brand to person association? Say like Mr Nithin Kamath of Zerodha, the Bansals of Flipkart, or yourself for LearnApp?
Prateek: So I am a very strong believer of this. I think it’s very important for a company to be associated with one person. My friend was recently telling me that this is a bad thing because a lot of good companies are not associated with people. But I beg to differ. I think the companies which have gone very far do have this sort of feature in them. That’s not the most important thing. Definitely, your business is more important but having this personal association with a brand humanizes the business.
“I only do Algo-trading. I don’t place orders on my own. If a business is run with standard rules, why shouldn’t your trading?” — Prateek Singh
How far do you think the Indian markets are w.r.t. the foreign markets in terms of invasion of technology into trading?
Prateek: So if you look at how broking works abroad, they are almost like banks. So if you have some money lying in your account, it actually earns you interest where in India it does not. This is just one example. You can do so much but that’s to do with India’s regulation rather than tech. Surely we are opening up our regulations and this is just the start. When you grow up or I grow up a little more, we’ll look at this time and say I can’t believe I was part of it. India will be one of the hottest fin-tech markets. So we are poised for growth as we are not even at the start.
Algo-Trading is now a ‘prerequisite’ for surviving in tomorrow’s financial markets. You yourself are a mentor of an Algo-trading course on LearnApp. What’s your take on Algo-trading?
Prateek: I only do Algo-trading. So an interesting here is, especially for Algokart, what you are trying to do is de-humanize how you execute a plan. If you look at any business, they are running because they have got a set of rules and standard operating features. They know how much money comes in and what goes out. Exactly like an Algo. So what an Algo does is, you have a set of rules, you know how much money is going in and what’s the probability of what’s going to come out. If a business is run with standard rules, why shouldn’t your trading? When people try to predict where the market is headed, I feel 99% of the time they will fail and even if they win, it’s luck. It’s not a long term sustainable model. You have to have a rule-based way to trade. You can do it without an Algo but human error is so high, you won’t be able to execute it. Be it for the simplest of the orders or for long term investing, you should use an Algo. So I know managers in India who manage thousands of crores in their portfolio who also use Algo for taking long term trades because they want it to be as rule based as possible. So I feel Algo is the only way you should trade.
Since you have been a trader/investor in your self-capacity before. How do you think indexes are valued at the current levels?
Prateek: I shouldn’t be answering that question because even if the market goes up or down, the Algos will do its job. So for the Algos, it doesn’t matter if the nifty is overvalued or undervalued. I honestly feel it is extremely overvalued, and the fall has just begun. But having said that, there is no cause of how it is valued on my trading systems.
For the full interview, go to https://youtu.be/Ev7Rt5bS8Pw
Happy Listening!
