How StockGro Is Building An Intelligence Layer For India’s Next 100 Mn Investors

“Tried everything under the sun… but nothing worked. Good weeks were usually followed by disastrous ones,” wrote marginmemos, an anonymous Reddit user who shared verified proof of losing more than ₹50 Lakh in futures and options trading. 

Unfortunately, this isn’t a one-off incident. According to SEBI, nine out of every 10 retail investors who trade in F&Os close a losing bet.

Ironically, this is happening at a time when India’s retail investing story is being celebrated like never before, with demat accounts multiplying, broker app downloads at an all-time high, and millions of first-time investors entering the stock market. 

Besides, options trading volumes have surged to such levels that the government raised the securities transaction tax on F&O twice in two years, in 2024 and again in 2026, to curb speculative trading.

But it does not mean that people completely understand what they’re trading. This is also because the infrastructure for trading has scaled faster than the infrastructure for understanding and learning the technicalities of trading. 

A 21-year-old today can open a demat account in minutes, get intraday leverage within the hour, and place an options bet by evening, all without ever being asked whether he understands what theta (the rate at which an options contract loses its value as it gets closer to its expiration date) decay does to a Thursday expiry. This gap, between access and judgement, is where Ajay Lakhotia says he found his opportunity with StockGro, an investment advisory platform. 

“I was watching an entire generation getting unprecedented access to public markets and building conviction on borrowed ideas from social media, friends, relatives, and whoever sounded confident,” said Lakhotia. 

In 2020, Lakhotia founded StockGro as an investment advisory platform to offer institutional-grade research, trading tools, and insights from SEBI-registered analysts. 

The platform acts as a layer before any stock market order is executed, helping users decide whether to execute a trade or walk away.  

Speaking with Inc42, Lakhotia, the founder and chief evolution officer at StockGro, breaks down his product vision, the problem he set out to solve, AI’s evolving role in public market investing, and his key priorities for the brand going forward.

Here are the edited excerpts from the conversation: 

Inc42: What convinced you to build StockGro?

Ajay Lakhotia: Honestly, the market had solved access way before it solved judgement. Demat accounts were shooting up because broking had become frictionless and information was available at scale. But when I talked to new investors, I kept hearing one thing again and again: “They knew what stock they owned, but not why they owned it”.

What I was really watching was an entire generation gaining unprecedented access to public markets and building their convictions on borrowed ideas from social media, friends, relatives, and whoever sounded most confident.

Inc42: A lot of first-time investors today are caught between social media tips, Telegram groups, YouTube influencers and brokerage apps. In your view, how serious is the trust deficit in retail investing today?

Ajay Lakhotia: India is shifting from a market of occasional retail participation to one where retail investors hold the market steady, even when FIIs walk out. And we feel that the system must enable and support every retail investor. 

Our Investor Behaviour Index, done with 1Lattice, captured this issue. A lot of investors are very new to the market, and those who don’t invest yet told us that they’d start investing if someone simply guided them through the process. So while the aspiration is there, confidence in the decisions is still an issue. 

You see the trust deficit clearly the moment a user can’t tell the difference between a well-researched view and a gut-feeling-based tip. If the next 100 Mn Indians enter the markets without that filter, we’ll end up with more market activity, sure, but not necessarily better wealth creation for our youngsters. And that’s what I am trying to solve with StockGro.

Inc42: SEBI’s data shows over 90% of individual F&O traders lose money. Yet volumes keep climbing. How do you see this trend among Indian investors, and is StockGro doing anything to address this?

Ajay Lakhotia: The F&O data is really a warning sign. I feel excitement is outpacing risk understanding. Leverage makes markets feel more rewarding than they really are, social media makes complex products look simple, and a few early wins can create false confidence. But the market always ends up testing your position sizing, risk management, and ability to handle volatility. 

Now, the answer to that isn’t to stop people from taking risks. What we’re trying to do at StockGro is make that risk visible before it turns into a loss. So on StockGro, a user can test expert trades or even their own thesis in a strategy builder, watch the drawdowns play out, compare outcomes, and understand what drove the result.

So instead of asking “Can I make quick money?”, people start asking “Do I understand the conditions under which this trade fails, and how do I improve it?” And in a market where complex products are growing this fast, that shift is essential.

Inc42: You describe StockGro as more than an investing platform. Can you explain how education, community, SEBI-registered advisory and AI come together to create what you call a trust layer for investors?

Ajay Lakhotia: Most investing apps start at the transaction screen. We start at the decision screen. And that distinction matters more than it sounds. 

Our job isn’t to get a user trading more often. It’s to help them decide better before they trade at all. A broker’s job is execution. Ours is preparation. That’s a completely different incentive structure, and it produces a completely different product.

Our trust layer has four parts, and each one keeps a check on the others. There are 150-plus SEBI-registered analysts on the platform putting out close to 2,000 trade calls a month. Every one of those calls carries the analyst’s own record attached to it, for example, how many of their calls have worked, what accuracy they run at, what those calls actually returned in profit.

Secondly, there’s Stoxo, our AI layer, which takes company data, market data, macro trends, technicals and sentiment and turns it into explainable research you can cross-examine. Then a strategy builder, so you can test an expert’s trade or your own thesis and watch the drawdowns play out before any real money moves. Finally, around all of it, a community debating about every one of these ideas in public.

None of these four pillars demand blind trust. They encourage self-built conviction. That’s the whole design.

Inc42: Financial inclusion has been a core part of the StockGro journey. What are the biggest misconceptions about investing that you still see among young users joining the platform today?

Ajay Lakhotia: The first misconception, which is also very common, is the belief that if you know everything, you can ace market decisions. That’s totally wrong. Young investors have access to the world’s knowledge, but knowing what’s trending isn’t the same as understanding whether it actually belongs in your portfolio.

The second is that if an influencer, or even a certified expert, suggests something with confidence, he must be credible. Again, totally wrong. What we need to ask is about their track record. How did similar calls perform? What is the risk? 

And the third is that activity means progress. In markets, the goal is not to constantly be doing something. It’s to make fewer, better-understood decisions. We want users asking themselves: what’s the thesis here, what can go wrong, and have I actually tested this before I put my money at risk? 

Inc42: You said that community-driven investing can be powerful, but it can also amplify herd behaviour? How does StockGro encourage informed investing without becoming an echo chamber?

Ajay Lakhotia: Community becomes dangerous the moment popularity replaces proof. A feed that only shows what everyone’s buying can quickly turn into a tip circulation machine. We’re building the exact opposite: a place where every idea can be questioned, tested and tracked.

The expert layer really matters here. Social media tipsters can delete their bad calls, vanish after a loss, or just restart with a clean narrative. On StockGro, experts carry their track record on every single post. So users can actually look at past performance before they act on a recommendation, and that creates better accountability for experts and better benchmarks for users.

Strategy testing also reduces herd behaviour. Instead of copying a trade just because it’s popular, users can examine the thesis, compare outcomes, and see whether the reasoning actually held up. So community becomes a market-context layer, not a substitute for your own judgement.

Inc42: StockGro works closely with SEBI-registered advisors and analysts. Do you believe regulated expertise will become increasingly important in India?

Ajay Lakhotia: Yes, because scale without accountability is fragile. India has a large and growing base of investors, but the number of licensed professionals is far smaller than the demand for guidance. That gap has to be solved by making qualified expertise more accessible.

On StockGro, the idea is that users go beyond an expert’s certification to evaluate their historical performance, consistency and risk profile before acting on a recommendation. That transparency raises the bar for the expert as well.

This is where regulated advisory and AI work together. Experts bring domain judgement and accountability. AI helps organise data and explain reasoning at scale. In the next phase of Indian investing, this credibility will be a competitive advantage.

Inc42: Tell us about Stoxo. You’re calling it India’s first AI research platform for stock markets. What does it actually do?

Ajay Lakhotia: Stoxo is our AI-powered financial research engine for capital markets. A user can ask a market question in plain language (about a stock, sector, macro event, or technical setup) and get a reasoned research output instead of a generic summary.

It is built for India from the ground up: Indian equities, corporate filings, market cycles, macro variables, sector behaviour, analyst intelligence and StockGro ecosystem signals. The architecture uses 80+ specialised agents across fundamental, technical, macro, sentiment, sector and risk contexts, so the answer is not one-dimensional.

The practical value is speed & reliability. Work that could take hours across reports, charts and news can be converted into an explainable answer in seconds. Stoxo does not replace investor judgement; it gives the investor a sharper research desk.

Inc42: We are seeing quite a lot of excitement around AI in financial services. Where do you think AI can genuinely improve investing outcomes, and where should investors remain cautious?

Ajay Lakhotia: AI improves investing outcomes by turning complexity into usable research. Most of us can’t process the plethora of information that surrounds us all the time, and AI is really good at it. 

But we have to keep in mind that markets are probabilistic. Any AI system that sounds like an oracle is dangerous. The right output should be holistic and show assumptions, risks, counterpoints and the evidence behind a view.

That is how we think about Stoxo: insight, not temptation. It should help users cross-examine an expert recommendation or their own thesis, understand scenarios and decide with better context. The final accountability still belongs with the investor.

Inc42: Monetisation in fintech usually means either the product is free and the user is the product, or you charge upfront, and most people leave. How is StockGro threading that needle?

Ajay Lakhotia: I believe that the business model has to match the promise. If we are building a trust-led research and advisory stock market platform, we cannot depend on pushing unnecessary transactions or treating user behaviour as inventory.

Our approach is built around a simple, affordable subscription model. Anyone can start with a free plan and upgrade for around ₹200 a month. The idea is to make high-quality market research & smart investing accessible to everyone. I am talking about the kind of advice that typically costs thousands of rupees and is out of reach for most retail investors. All this while keeping their privacy fully protected. 

We also believe that if consistent intelligence is useful and fairly priced, users build a daily habit around it.

Inc42: How is StockGro performing in terms of user growth, engagement and monetisation?

Ajay Lakhotia: The strongest signal is that StockGro has moved from reach to repeat use. The platform has built a 35 Mn+ user ecosystem in India since its launch, and Stoxo scaled from 2 Lakh beta users to 2.3 Mn+ monthly active users in seven months.

This means our product is becoming part of research workflows. Stoxo handles millions of daily queries, has seen a 19x jump since launch, operates at sub-two-second latency during market hours, and paid users average more than 10 queries a day.

To answer the next part of your question, we are clear about our priorities: deepen the India equity intelligence layer, make expert performance even more transparent, broaden access to conversational AI, and expand into additional asset classes where users lack research-backed wealth decisions.

And amid all this, regulation and credibility will remain central because trust is in the product architecture for us.

Inc42: Looking five years ahead, what would success look like for StockGro? Do you see the company becoming an advisory platform, an investing companion, an AI-powered financial operating system, or something even larger?

Ajay Lakhotia: Five years on, we see StockGro being recognised as the advisory and research platform that helped retail investors invest smarter and build wealth. The larger ambition is to become the single point of entry for smart financial decisions — not just what to buy, but how to think, test, size, review and grow wealth responsibly. 

India is our first market because the need is massive and immediate. But the model is meant for the globe, and we are seeing early signs of adoption even in the UAE. Wherever retail participation is outpacing access to credible advice, StockGro’s investment intelligence infrastructure will travel.

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