Our goal will be to go public within the next three years: Mohit Batra

With an in depth analysis of over 4000 listed companies on its platform, DR. MOHIT BATRA, founder and chief executive officer, MarketsMojo tells Puneet Wadhwa in an interview that the company is applying for a portfolio management services (PMS) license and plans to launch this business with a direct investment of Rs 5,000 crore. Edited excerpts:

MarketsMojo analyses over 4000 publicly traded stocks. Can you shed some light on how this works?

Our proprietary IP, refined over 8 years, selects high-performing stocks. Each stock has 550 parameters that analyses 30 billion data points daily on a company's fundamentals and technology. The four pillars of analyses includes quality (fundamentals, cash flow, balance sheet, and company growth over five years); valuation (around seven parameters that are related to both growth and the balance sheet); current financial trend (compares fundamental growth in the most recent quarter over the past five quarters, adjusting for seasonality); and technical that has seven broad parameters, such as RSI and Bollinger bands, are used to determine a stock’s entry and exit points.

So, what is the business model?

MarketsMojo is the first platform to cover all publicly traded companies, portfolio advisories, model portfolios, and equity market data. We also operate in 21 countries, including the US, Canada, and Mexico. Our three business models revolve around retail investors who lack equity market portfolio advice, research, and assistance; B2B/B2C data requirements for brokerage houses and stock exchanges. Our partners include Motilal Oswal Securities Limited (MOSL), Axis Securities, Geojit Financial Services, National Stock exchange (NSE), and others; and portfolio advisory for wealthy investors. We execute two types of portfolio advisory services for investors – model portfolios for pure retail and an investment advisory license for high net worth individuals (HNIs). Our investors, however, trade independently through brokers.

What are your expansion plans?

We have over Rs 65,000 crore worth of assets under our advisory. Our upcoming business expansion strategy is two-fold. First, we are applying for a portfolio management services (PMS) license and plan to launch a PMS business with a direct investment of Rs 5,000 crore from the clients in our system who we advise. We will continue to advise clients with less than Rs 50 lakhs under our current registered investment advisor (RIA) license. That apart, we also plan to apply for an AIF license to provide specialised services to super-HNIs. Our long-term goal is to obtain an asset management company (AMC) license within the next two to three years.

Do you have fund-raising and/or listing plans?

MarketsMojo is a profitable bootstrapped company and has grown manifold since inception. We are self-sufficient in the assets business, but if that large opportunity needs to be funded, we will need to look into inorganic funding options. Regarding growth, we are typically growing at around 2x-3x of our topline on a yearly basis. Our goal will be to go public within the next three years.

You have recently launched India Inc. report based on the September quarter results. Any insights that you would like to share?

No major negative surprises except for the slowdown in rural demand. Iron and steel, nonferrous metals, cement, and other commodity-related businesses performed poorly dragging India Inc.'s profitability. Both private and public sector banks have performed well as their non-performing asset (NPA) levels have reduced. Indian information technology (IT) companies have done well despite the slowdown in Europe and the US. Thus, IT looks promising and the capital goods sector is also expected to perform well due to massive government focus on the capex just before general elections.


Photo Credit: Kamlesh Pednekar