Startup Deep Dive : StockGro — how a 35 million-user trading game rebuilt itself around SEBI rules

StockGro signed up tens of millions of Indians to practise the stock market with virtual money, and by 2026 the company put its community at more than 35 million users. Yet in the very year that audience kept swelling, its revenue from operations fell 34% to ₹86.5 crore and its losses widened 84% to ₹101 crore in FY24 (Entrackr, from Registrar of Companies filings) — the paradox of a platform that grew a crowd faster than it learned to charge it.

The story of StockGro is really the story of one bet and one shock. The bet: that young Indians would learn to invest if you made the market feel like a social game with no real money on the line. The shock: that in 2024 the market regulator, SEBI, moved against exactly the kind of live-data-fed virtual trading the platform was built on, forcing a rebuild around registered advice. What follows is where the money came from, where it went, and why the company’s own numbers pull in two directions.

Quick facts

What StockGro does

StockGro is a mobile-first platform that teaches Indians the stock market and then tries to keep them on the app as they start investing real money. It began as a social investing app where users traded with virtual cash, competed on leaderboards and followed each other’s moves; it has since layered on paid research, model portfolios and advice delivered through SEBI-registered analysts. In the company’s own framing it is a place to “master trading and investments,” aimed squarely at first-time and young investors rather than active professional traders.

• Core users: retail beginners, students and first-time investors in India (company-stated).
• Community claim: more than 35 million users across its ecosystem (company-stated, 2026).
• AI layer: Stoxo, its AI research assistant, scaled from about 2 lakh beta users to 2.3 million-plus monthly active users in seven months (company-stated).
• Regulatory identity: operates as a SEBI-registered Research Analyst (Registration No. INH000018300) and states it does not hold user funds (company disclosures, stockgro.club).

The founding insight

StockGro was founded in 2020 by Ajay Lakhotia, who came to the problem from the investor’s side of the table rather than the trader’s. Before StockGro he had built and exited a family manufacturing business, earned an MBA from the Indian School of Business, and spent years in finance and venture capital — including a stint in ICICI’s investment-banking world and a role as Director, Investment at Vertex Ventures, the venture arm linked to Singapore’s Temasek. He had also been close to consumer-fintech bets such as Kissht.

The insight was simple and demographic. Tens of millions of young Indians were curious about equities but frozen by two fears: losing money, and looking foolish. If you removed real money from the first attempts and made the whole thing social — leaderboards, virtual portfolios, people to copy and compete with — you could turn a intimidating subject into a habit. Learn first with fake money, the theory went, and the real brokerage relationship would follow. The hard part was never getting people to sign up; it was turning a free crowd into paying customers, and doing it without falling foul of a regulator that watches anything touching live market prices.

The struggle years

StockGro’s early years were about scale, not economics. The community grew quickly — the company said it crossed five million users within about 15 months of launch, by late 2021. But the model that drove that growth, virtual trading fed by live market data, was also its structural weakness: engagement was cheap to buy and hard to bank. Two pressures defined the period.

• The monetisation gap: a large free audience learning with play money is not the same as a paying customer base, and StockGro spent heavily on growth and product while the paying layer stayed thin.
• The regulatory overhang: any platform that mirrors live stock prices for gaming or paper trading sits close to a line SEBI has grown steadily less comfortable with — a line the regulator would redraw sharply in 2024.

The financials tell the strain plainly once the FY24 accounts are read against FY23. Revenue from operations did not merely stall; it fell — from ₹131 crore in FY23 to ₹86.5 crore in FY24, a 34% drop — while the net loss widened 84% to ₹101 crore (Entrackr, from RoC filings). A one-third fall in revenue in a single year, for a company that had raised tens of millions of dollars, is the kind of number a pivot is built to answer.

The turning point: SEBI, 2024

The single event that reshaped StockGro was regulatory, not commercial. By a circular dated 24 May 2024, SEBI barred stock exchanges and market intermediaries from sharing real-time price data with third parties. Then, in November 2024, SEBI issued an advisory warning against unauthorised virtual trading, paper trading and fantasy games built on the stock prices of listed companies, noting that such activity can offend the Securities Contracts (Regulation) Act, 1956 and the SEBI Act, 1992, and that participants get none of the protections real investors have (SEBI; Trilegal; TeamLease RegTech).

For a platform whose flywheel was live-data virtual trading, this was existential on one side and clarifying on the other. On the “before” side sat a free-to-play engagement machine with a shrinking, loss-making top line — FY24 revenue of ₹86.5 crore against a ₹101 crore loss. On the “after” side sat a narrower but defensible identity: a SEBI-registered Research Analyst platform (Registration No. INH000018300) selling advice and research to people investing real money through their own brokers, with the company stating it holds no client funds. StockGro’s public positioning shifted accordingly, toward advisory, model portfolios and a network it describes as 150-plus SEBI-registered analysts. The pivot swapped a large, cheap, exposed audience for a smaller, compliant, chargeable one — and set up the revenue rebound the company would later claim.

The money behind it

StockGro has been well funded across a mix of marquee angels, gaming-heavy venture firms and, latterly, debt and public-markets money. The rounds, in order:

• Angel round, about $1 million (November 2020): backers included CRED founder Kunal Shah, Bounce co-founder Vivekananda Hallekere, Moglix founder Rahul Garg and Livspace co-founder Ramakant Sharma (Inc42).
• Seed / pre-Series A, $5 million (August 2021): led by Roots Ventures with Velo Partners (Inc42).
• Series A, $32 million (January 2022): led by BITKRAFT Ventures, General Catalyst and Itai Tsiddon (co-founder of Lightricks), with existing backers including Roots Ventures and Creed Capital Asia (Entrackr; YourStory).
• Debt financing, about $24.7 million (January 2024): investors included Hindustan Media Ventures (Inc42).
• Convertible debt, ₹50 crore (September 2025): from Trifecta Capital (Entrackr).
• Series B, ₹150 crore (about $17 million, November 2025): led by ace investor Mukul Agarwal and affiliated entities (Entrackr).
• Series B1, $13 million (December 2025, closing into January 2026): led by BITKRAFT Ventures, taking the Series B fundraise to about $30 million (Entrackr; Inc42).
• Pre-Series C, up to $15 million led by Tawuniya, Saudi Arabia’s largest insurer: reported to be in advanced discussions (Entrackr) — not confirmed as closed.

On totals, sources differ. Entrackr puts money raised to date at roughly $97 million across equity and debt, while Inc42’s aggregated tracker shows about $108.6 million across eight rounds. On valuation, StockGro was reported to raise its Series B at about $362 million (roughly ₹3,475 crore at $1 ≈ ₹96.0), described by Entrackr as “over $360 million” — a figure that is reported rather than officially disclosed by the company.

How it makes money

StockGro’s revenue engine has moved from engagement toward advice. The mechanics, as the company describes them and as its registration implies:

• Paid research and advisory: subscriptions and fees for research, trade ideas and model portfolios delivered through SEBI-registered analysts — the core of the post-2024 model.
• Premium and educational products: paid learning, tools and premium tiers on top of the free social layer.
• What it does not do: StockGro states it does not hold user funds and is not the broker executing trades — users invest through their own broking accounts, which keeps it on the advisory side of SEBI’s rules rather than the custody side.

The part outsiders get wrong is treating the 35 million-user figure as a revenue base. It is an audience, most of it free; the money sits with the sliver that pays for research and advice. That is why revenue can fall by a third (FY24) even as the community grows — the free top of the funnel expands faster than the paying bottom. The whole strategic question for StockGro is the take rate on attention: how many of tens of millions of learners can be converted into paying advisory customers before the marketing that fills the funnel eats the margin.

The numbers

Two different pictures of StockGro’s finances circulate, and it matters which you trust. The filing-based reporting (Entrackr, citing RoC filings) shows a loss-making business whose revenue fell sharply in FY24. A separate aggregated dataset (Inc42’s company tracker) shows FY25 as a profitable, growing year — a claim not yet corroborated by filing-level reporting and one that sits awkwardly against the FY24 loss. Both are shown below with their sources; the FY23 and FY24 rows are the better-substantiated.

Read conservatively: FY24 is the hard, verified fact — revenue of ₹86.5 crore, a ₹101 crore loss, revenue down 34% year-on-year. The FY25 figures, if they hold, would mark a genuine turnaround (₹125.5 crore of revenue and a ₹34.6 crore profit per the Inc42 tracker), consistent with the advisory pivot finally paying — but they should be treated as unverified until statutory FY25 accounts are reported. Where the two datasets disagree, this piece leans on the filing-based numbers.

Where the money comes from

StockGro does not publish a clean segment table, so the split has to be read from its model and its regulatory identity rather than from disclosed line items. The shape looks like this:

• By product: the paying revenue now centres on research and advisory subscriptions, not the free social/virtual-trading layer that drives the user count.
• By user type: a very large free base (35 million-plus, company-stated) sits atop a much smaller paying cohort — the free-to-paid conversion is the whole business.
• By geography: India-first and India-centred; the platform is built for domestic retail investors, and even a Saudi insurer’s reported interest (Tawuniya) is capital, not a market shift.

The surprise is directional. For a “social investing” brand, the growth story of 2025-26 is not the social feed at all — it is an AI research tool. StockGro says Stoxo went from roughly 2 lakh beta users to 2.3 million-plus monthly active users in seven months (company-stated). The community brought the audience; software that answers investing questions may be what finally monetises it.

The risks

• Regulatory dependence. StockGro’s business now rests on staying inside SEBI’s Research Analyst framework. The May 2024 data-sharing bar and November 2024 advisory show how quickly the rules around live data and virtual trading can move; a further tightening around advisory, subscriptions or price-data use would hit the model directly (SEBI; Trilegal).
• Weak unit economics, so far. The verified accounts show revenue falling 34% to ₹86.5 crore in FY24 while losses widened to ₹101 crore — losses larger than revenue. Until the claimed FY25 profitability is confirmed in filings, the base case is a company that has spent more to grow than it has earned.
• Conversion and churn. A 35 million-plus free base is a marketing asset, not a revenue base. If paying advisory subscribers stay a thin slice, or churn once markets turn, the gap between audience and income persists — and the customer-acquisition spend that fills the funnel keeps pressuring margins.

The takeaway

StockGro is a case study in the difference between an audience and a business. It solved the hard consumer problem — getting tens of millions of wary young Indians to engage with the stock market — and then discovered that the very mechanism that made engagement cheap, live-data virtual trading, was also the one a regulator could switch off. The transferable lesson is not “don’t build a community.” It is that a growth engine built on a regulatory grey area is a borrowed asset, and the real company is whatever you can build before the loan is called. StockGro’s answer — pivot from free play to paid, registered advice, and let an AI tool do the converting — is a reasonable one. Whether it works will be settled not by the user counter but by the first FY that shows real revenue and a real profit at the same time.

Frequently asked questions

What is StockGro and who owns it?

StockGro is an Indian social investing and stock-market learning platform, run by Assetgro Fintech Private Limited (CIN U65999KA2020PTC131557), a Bengaluru company founded in 2020 by Ajay Lakhotia, who remains founder and CEO.

Is StockGro registered with SEBI, and does it hold my money?

StockGro states that it operates as a SEBI-registered Research Analyst (Registration No. INH000018300) and does not hold user funds; users invest through their own broking accounts while StockGro provides research and advisory (company disclosures).

How much money has StockGro raised and what is it worth?

Reported totals range from about $97 million (Entrackr, equity and debt) to roughly $108.6 million (Inc42’s tracker). Its Series B was reported at a valuation of about $362 million in late 2025 — a reported figure, not an official company disclosure.

Is StockGro profitable?

Filing-based reporting shows a net loss of ₹101 crore in FY24 on revenue of ₹86.5 crore. An aggregated dataset (Inc42) shows a ₹34.6 crore profit in FY25, but that has not yet been corroborated by statutory filings, so profitability should be treated as unconfirmed as of September 2026.

Why did StockGro’s revenue fall in FY24?

Revenue from operations fell 34% to ₹86.5 crore in FY24 (from ₹131 crore in FY23). The drop coincided with SEBI’s 2024 moves against live-data virtual trading, which pushed StockGro to rebuild its model around paid, registered advisory rather than free virtual trading.

Sources

Figures are as of September 2026. Currency converted at $1 ≈ ₹96.0 as of 18 September 2026 (Trading Economics).

• Entrackr — StockGro Series B and FY24/FY23 financials (RoC filings): revenue from operations, losses, funding, valuation (November 2025; January 2026).
• Inc42 — StockGro company profile, funding tracker and financials tab (2025–2026).
• SEBI — advisory on unauthorised virtual trading / gaming platforms (November 2024) and circular barring real-time price-data sharing (24 May 2024).
• Trilegal and TeamLease RegTech — analyses of SEBI’s 2024 actions on virtual trading and live market data (2024).
• YourStory — StockGro $32 million Series A round (January 2022).
• SiliconIndia — StockGro Series B reported at about $362 million valuation (2025).
• StockGro (stockgro.club) — company disclosures: SEBI Research Analyst registration INH000018300, analyst network, user and Stoxo figures.
• The Company Check / Tracxn — Assetgro Fintech Private Limited legal-entity details and CIN.
• Trading Economics — USD/INR reference rate (18 September 2026).

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