Thread by @sidart_misra

How a self-taught CA developed popular investing platforms like @screener_in and Valuepickr.com?
Today, screener.in is used by thousands of investors. But do you know who are the folks, running this for people like us? Read👇

Agroha (today's Hisar) was the capital of Agrasena, who is credited with the establishment of a kingdom of traders in North India. Agroha had 18 sub-administrative units, which later turned into 18 gotras. This translated into the surnames of the community of Agarwals in India.

Mittal is one among those. After the decline of Agroha, the majority of the Agarwals migrated towards Rajputana and Punjab. Our Mittal’s had their origin from Ambala, and in continuation of their community, their grandfather got into moneylending and shifted to Lucknow.

This is where Mr. Satya Prakash Mittal was born. Money can solve problems and money can create problems. In an unfortunate turn of events, his father was looted and killed by dacoits. This is when he decided to stay away from any cash business (esp moneylending). But, he had very

well understood the power of compounding (which was happening in the case of moneylending). So, the natural option for him was to try his luck in the equity market. He started in late 1970s, & given Lucknow had no institutions for that, he would often go to Kanpur Stock market.

He became a full-time broker by 1984. The stock market was altogether a different ball game. There was not much information available, and one must buy stocks in lots. It all began with little bets and he was using these bets with his own form of method in the madness approach.

The idea was to discover better bets based on data or as Ayush says: "Find Good Unpopular Companies". One of the early bets was SBI and the big moment came with DLF in 1994. Then, by the time he passed 10th grade, Ayush had already been introduced to the rule of Stock picking.

He was given the task of identifying the low PE companies, 52 weeks low, etc from magazine or business newspapers. Ayush, was not very keen on picking those as his future trade and even went to Kota to be part of the Factory educational system, in his aim to become an engineer.

It all took him just a week to realize that it was better to work with PE, Price-to-book, ROCE, etc than mugging up those chemical compounds. His Mantra was to pick small companies at attractive valuations (PE in single digits, P/B of 1.5 & growth more than 20%).

In the Small-cap boom Of 2003- 2007, they made good money. Pratyush, soon join his BHAI and PAPA, having found Equity as his True North, soon after passing his 10th grade. To their pleasant surprise, his introduction brought some big disruptions!
The internet is a curious place.

It’s not just a place to get your daily dose of information/entertainment. While most of his friends were busy downloading nudes <on dial-up internet>, he was busy hunting for multi-bagger scrips. He soon got excited about the possibilities of the tech-play in this business.

Ayush, was also using the internet to meet with other stock enthusiasts. It was via such medium, that he ended up getting connected to a gentleman named Donald Francis. He jokes, “I thought I am calling some firangi, but was surprised to hear a Hindi filmi song as the ringtone”.

He holds extremely high regards for Donald, “he is extremely hard working and a great researcher”. Among their closed groups, Ayush suggested Balkrishna industries as a potential multibagger. Then, Donald fired multiple questions around their fundamentals and macro environments.

Ayush got a little annoyed and told him, “why don’t you find it out yourself.”. Later Donald did amazing research on Balkrishna Industries, but it only validated the things Ayush had told him already. Both soon decided to do something for good quality research and discussion.

Valuepickr got started, today is the best place for quality research. Contributors to the forum have had several successes using their domain knowledge. A doctor spotted Ajanta Pharma, which went on to be a multi-bagger. Avanti & Shilpa Medicare were other such picks.

It’s easy to think that innovation is the product of a few great minds, and it happens in a flash of lightening. But the reality is that innovation is just a numbers game, the more of it you do, the better your chances of reaping the benefits.

So, when Pratyush was asked to do the manual work of shortlisting of companies. He thought there can be a better way. He felt the need of extracting data from the various place and then let Microsoft Excel automate certain tasks < auto-fill, auto-calculate and auto-lookup>.

He made a product of it and called it: ‘Awesome BSEXL’. “Using excel filters and advanced filters, you can create queries as you like and make the reverse processing possible (search companies which perform as YOU want them to perform).”

Around the same time, still a CA student he started a blog in 2009. Disruptive product is often produced with passion, knowledge and funding. Here passion and knowledge were always there, and need of funding was solved by his father, who just asked.

"by when do you think this will be a business on it’s own?." Our boy put a far-stretched date. His CA teacher liked the idea and said, try to get 10k users!
We all know, knowledge is power.

But then the world of capitalism doesn’t let you get that so easy. Nimesh Kampani started Capital Market in 1985. And, Prithvi Haldea started PRIME Database in 1989.
But democratizing of these data was still a far-off dream. This is when Screener came on May 24, 2009.

Next year another set of brothers, who were also Equity-addicted-schoolboys, started Zerodha on 15th Aug, 2010. Their act of easing the experience, along with the democratising of stock selection data by Screener is in some way related to the rise of new-age-retail-investors.

For many years, they depended on the member donations and then a few years back when they decided to start a paid version of it.
@faltoo said: "the expectation was to get some 100 users. But then they got way too many more!"

Today, hardly any sane investors ignore the screener page of the stock, they think of investing.
So, what next?
They have high regards for what @Tijori1 is doing. “When we want to launch, want to useful, so will Not make anything till it adds more value.”

So, for their own platform, they want to leverage their userbase, by working on a Wiki feature. To let people also contribute and enhance the knowledge base. And yes they are also growing their own PMS, which they started in 2019.
As @ayushmitt says: "Facts only help"