See how Rohit Gadia turned his passion into Rs 13 crore stock trading enterprise?

For most people, college is a time for fun, bunking classes. For Mr. Gadia, it was a time when he first discovered his fascination for the stock market, and which propelled him to start CapitalVia Global Research Limited, an investment advisory company.

Back in 2003, when he was studying commerce at JN College in Bangalore, he was trading every day. He picked up odd jobs after classes, be it working part-time for Hewlett Packard's BPO as a business process executive or selling cell phone SIM cards on roads, to earn pocket money that he could invest in the markets.

In fact, he would even ask his friends to swipe his credit card when they shopped and reimburse him in cash. He would make Rs 4,000-5,000 a month and he would transfer the entire sum to his savings account from where it would go to his demit account for trading. Despite belonging to a well-to-do Indore-based business family, he ceased to depend on his father for finances since his second year of college.

It wasn't sunshine all the way. He also lost a lot of money while trading, the biggest mistake being to leverage on his savings by almost 10 times. This made him realize that while his love for trading sure had the potential to become a career, a day trader's life is no cakewalk.

It was towards the end of graduation in 2005 that he noticed another key fact: Throw a rock and you're sure to hit one of the several large broking houses specializing in handholding big investors with deep pockets. But there was no one to guide a newbie like him.

That got him thinking about starting a web-based research company, which would focus on technical analysis and provide recommendations or real time trading signals/data to traders for intra-day and short-term trading.

This would encourage them to trade as an informed trader and not merely on speculation. So, in October 2006, he registered an online domain name as CapitalVia.com, which cost him Rs 400.
The company started off very casually because he still had my Master's degree classes to attend. He basically started doing technical analysis for traders and sold the data to interested customers as a trial pack for two-three days or Rs 4,000 a month for a full-subscription pack.

However, his part-time entrepreneurial days were numbered. His family placed a lot of emphasis on further education and he put his one-man company on the backburner in 2007, to join SP Jain College, Mumbai, for a one-year MBA programme in investment banking. On returning to Indore in June 2008, he resolutely dived head-first into CapitalVia's operations.

The first thing he did was to rent a small office in the town and hire 4-5 people. By the end of two months, he already had about 40-50 registered customers. Initially, he was playing every role in the company-from office boy to CEO-but the fact that he chose to set up shop in a tier II city had its advantages.
Think cheap labor, lower rents, lower lifestyle expenses as well as people's expectations. Moreover, the manpower is zealous and hardworking with an immense potential to learn. It was crucial for him to find such a combination since the company was taking off bang in the middle of the recession.

Other than a few thousand bucks for the office space, which he procured from his corpus made in the stock market, he did not invest in anything else. This is why he managed to break even within four-five months.

As the company grew, his set of challenges kept pace with it. Being an entrepreneur is easier than being a people's person but he learned to manage employees and their issues. They generated Rs1.32 crore in revenue by the end of their first year, backed by a staff strength of 20, all trained by him.

By mid-2009, they had moved office twice, seeking larger space, and increased the headcount to 45. They were generating profits of 25-30%, and this by promoting themselves only through SMS and online marketing. However, most of the money earned was re-invested into infrastructure, training and marketing. In fact, they never garnered any cash profits as such.

Today, CapitalVia boasts a 510-strong team, of which 200 are under training and a customer base of about 2,500. They house one of the largest professional research and analysis teams in the country. Their product repertoire has grown since inception. The prices currently range from Rs4, 000 for individual day traders to Rs 25,000 for high net worth individuals. (Prices vary depending on a high risk and high reward ratio.) They have been growing at over 100% year-on-year.

Currently, they have operational offices in Indore, Bangalore, Ahmadabad, Singapore and Delaware (US). But there is no time to rest on their laurels. They want to help the Indian SMEs ecosystem to manage their currency risks.

CapitalVia aspires to be the Merrill Lynch for Indian SMEs because the latter cannot afford to take help from larger research MNCs due to higher costs. They also hold free education programmes and trader camps for their customers in Indore, where they invite 200-300 people.

They are now planning to open 12-15 branches across the country, first in Delhi and Mumbai and then expanding to tier II and III cities by the end of 2012-13. They expect to generate revenues of Rs35 crore by then. Since this is an upcoming industry, people have often tried to pull them down.

However, their motto is to keep moving forward. If you can't fly, you may crawl. That's what helpedMr. Rohit Gadia, a boy who finished his schooling in an off-the-map place like Burhanpur in Madhya Pradesh, find the strength and conviction to forge an Rs13 crore business from scratch.