Thread by @vineetpatawari

From rejecting a seven-figure job to building India’s largest platform for financial education,

Here’s the story behind my entrepreneurial journey so far.

I graduated from IIM Indore in 2008 and got placed in JP Morgan. Having a zeal to do something in the #education sector, I didn't take that #job, to start up a new venture of my own.

During that time CAT went online. I started my own venture- FireUp, an e-learning portal for training for #management entrance examinations.

The #startup failed. Many say it was ahead of its time as we Indians were not used to learning #Online back then. Took the decision of stepping back and joined Crisil.

In 2010, I met my college senior @vivbajaj. We had a common vision of simplifying finance for everyone. Back then, a career in financial #Markets were on the wish-list of a lot of people but very few could actually make it happen due to lack of proper #Training and resources.

The rising demand for trained professionals and the lack of availability in the financial markets is what gave us the #Inspiration to start a an online education platform.

Being already aware of the unstructured and fragmented nature of the financial market education segment, it was in 2014 we came together to launch @elearnmarkets to streamline and structure the #journey for individuals who want to make a #career in the financial markets.

We used technology to spread knowledge, designed our courses by making use of high-end and #interactive Learning Management systems.

We also made the #platform open to market experts so to enable practical experience sharing with the learners.

This helped us in creating large pool of learners who are well trained, skilled & a perfect fit to fill the manpower requirement of the industry. We got courses certified by @NSEIndia, MCX, and NCDEX which gave credibility & helped individuals to achieve their #career goals.

Moving ahead, In 2016, together with @vinaypagaria & @vivbajaj we launched @mystockedge providing a self-research and analysis tools in order to make stock analytics simpler for everyone.

Initially started as a sidekick to help learners get structured data of listed #Companies along with cutting-edge analytics, @mystockedge has now turned into a full-fledged equity and #mutualfunds research tool with the app garnering over 2 million downloads.

In 2021, Elearnmarkets & StockEdge combined saw a 3X jump in new users per month in comparison to pre-#COVID levels.

We have 2.3 million unique registered users & growing.

These figures speak in favor of widespread acceptance of financial #Markets as a #career option.

Today, we have a team of 190 dedicated people who are working hard to simplify financial markets for Indian retail investors, so that they can make better financial decisions.

I love my team!

We have now built @StockEdgeSocial, a community of like-minded people to interact and learn from each other.

In the next 24 months, we plan to expand our roots in tier-2 & tier-3 cities as well as abroad and to increase our current combined user base from 2.3 to 10 million.

My advice to future entrepreneurs:

Nothing is easy in life, so you have to stick around, which is more important than passion and #ideas. Don’t get blinded by the glamour of #startups & being an entrepreneur. If you stick around enough time, you will find the right approach.