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Bengaluru-based social trading platform Trinkerr has raised Series A funding of $6.6 million led by Accel India. The total funding raised by the startup now is over $8 million. The key investors in Trinkerr include – India Quotient and Titan Capital, as well as marquee angel investors like Sujeet Kumar of Udaan, Kunal Shah of Cred, Gaurav Munjal and Roman Saini of Unacademy, and Lalit Keshre and Harsh Jain of Groww.

While the team did not reveal its latest valuation, YS has learnt that Trinkerr has seen its valuation jump manifolds since its seed round just four months ago. The multi-fold surge in the valuation comes after the launch of its app- and web-based trading platform, which has received overwhelmingly positive reviews and feedback from thousands of its early users. 

Trinkerr was founded by Manvendra Singh, an IIT Kanpur and IIM Lucknow alumna and his friend and batchmate, Gaurav Agarwal, in April this year.

“We are building an enabled and empowered community of first-time and expert stock market investors”, says Manvendra. The startup enables retail investors to not just follow relevant expert traders but also emulate their portfolios and earn similar returns.

The team said it is the first full-fledged social trading platform of India and has the vision of securing financial freedom for millions of retail investors by giving them free and real-time access to the trading portfolios of hundreds of India’s best stock traders.

There has been a huge surge in the number of demat accounts in India over the past 18 months. Manvendra adds that in this year itself, the number of DMAT accounts has grown from 50 million to 70 million, driven not just by the rally in the equity markets but also the rising interest of young Indians in investing early and investing well.

Social trading allows investors to observe the trading behaviour of expert investors as well as their peers to build and/or grow their own portfolio. While social trading as a concept has started picking up recently in India, it is an established investment practice globally, led by companies such as eToro, which is a decacorn and Public.com, which is a unicorn. 

“However with little or no understanding of the equity market, most of the new investors are left to unverified advisory on social media platforms. After the proliferation of smartphones and with the rise of the age of discount brokers, the barriers to access financial markets have been torn down. But the real problem for a retail investor remains unsolved – which is not Why to trade but What to trade,” explains Manvendra.

Trinkerr already has a team of 55 and expects to be 100-strong in the next few months. Through its home-grown app, available on Android and the web, Trinkerr aims to play a leading role in making it easier for the next generation to connect with the financial markets in a country where only 3.7 percent people are connected with equity markets as against 40 percent in the developed countries.

The startup has just successfully completed its beta run, and is already seeing a 50 percent m-o-m growth in both users and transactions on its platform.