Indian startups saw their businesses boom in the last few years, propelled by an internet revolution and a tech-savvy audience that was open to experimentation.

This helped our nation unlock the achievement of becoming the world’s third-largest startup ecosystem - home to over 100 unicorns valued above USD 300 billion.

Amidst such economic exuberance, businesses tend to get extravagant. And this can lead to excess hiring and unnecessary spending without any focus on profitability. As a rapidly scaling startup, this phenomenon led to two key challenges for our company. First, we kept away from the hire and fire policy. Our focus was to build the best product with a lean but able team, even as other startups kept hiring and laying off without reason.

The second goal was to keep our spending in check without hampering our growth momentum. When funds are plenty, reasonable spending takes a backseat, but we didn’t let that happen at StockGro. All business decisions were made keeping sustainability in mind.

What are your expectations from 2023? Will some of the growth drivers kick in again or will it continue to be a cautious year as well?

The world has bounced back from a black swan event that disrupted human lives like never before. And while we are experiencing some economic after-effects, Indian markets have been fairly resilient in 2022.

Our economy is well-insulated from economic shocks like inflation and rate hikes, and this reflects in the strong momentum seen in Indian stocks. Benchmark indices have maintained gains and retail investor enthusiasm remains strong.

Even the broader fintech space is transforming quickly, leading to the advancement of key areas such as finance, payments, financial education and inclusion.

As the macroeconomic situation continues to stabilise, the fintech industry will receive support from investors and end-users, whose lives are being simplified and secured.

The ever increasing retail contribution to stocks is also a testimony to the impending growth in the investment sector. We believe that 2023 will bring greater optimism along with it.

Please share more on how 2022 panned out for your company in terms of revenue targets?

In 2022, StockGro witnessed rapid growth in user base, partnerships and revenue. The projected revenue was around $10 million, and we should be able to meet the target as planned.

What are some of your plans for 2023 and the areas of interest/ investment in the year ahead?

The StockGro team plans to expand its offerings to include various new asset classes including forex, commodity, and bonds. We intend to add passive investment options like gold, and build exciting new features to make profitable investing hassle-free and easy.

With the aim of making personal finance more accessible, we shall reach out to women and empower them with financial literacy.

Our goal is to grow at least three times in each successive year. We are keen on growing our educational and corporate partnerships manifold - a plan that’s in action. The StockGro team shall persevere to make investments social by building a resilient community of financial enthusiasts and experts who grow together.

As a leader, what were some of the things you had to do differently in 2022 especially given some of the external challenges in the year that ranged from founder troubles to restrained investment and large-scale layoffs?

As businesses grappled with a new world-order, markets were filled with noise. In such circumstances, it was important for me to cut the noise and focus on the product we were building.

We did this by acquiring high-calibre talent and maintaining laser sharp focus on business needs. In acquiring talent, we prioritised quality over quantity and diligently filtered through the huge pool of inbound interest.

Every member in the team was made privy to the noisy market conditions and this helped them separate rumours from facts - a strategy that allowed the team build better, faster, and stay calm.