Singapore startup launches stock market simulation app

It draws real-time data from 14 stock exchanges.

Participating in stock trading may be intimidating for most casual investors and deciding on the right trades to make can be an impossible task. Experienced traders have the knowledge and expertise, but without any incentive there is no reason to share information with other investors.

TradeHero aims to bridge the gap by providing a platform where anyone can make money from the financial markets, by subscribing to the expert trade feeds of top traders as guidelines for your real-life trades, or becoming a top trader and earning monthly subscription fees from other users who follow your trade feeds.

TradeHero is a stock market simulation mobile app that draws real-time data from 14 stock exchanges, 45,000 global securities and 1,300 currency pairs. Users are credited with a $100,000 starting portfolio and can make trades to create their own virtual portfolio.

The app’s Leaderboards identify the most successful traders (known as ‘Heroes’) by their returns, and they are ranked by Exchange, Sector, Monthly or Quarterly returns, as well as overall returns.

Followers can subscribe, for a small monthly fee, to follow and receive trade feeds from their chosen Heroes via push notifications on their mobile device. These push notifications detail each Buy and Sell action of the Hero, allowing followers to receive expert trading tips and personal insight into successful investment strategies. TradeHero will share subscription revenue from followers equally with Heroes, thus allowing Heroes to monetize their trading expertise.

"TradeHero makes learning about the stock market much less intimidating for novice investors, by making the whole process of buying and selling stocks fun and intuitive. The app has won many positive user reviews, with users praising the user interface and how much they enjoy learning about stocks by playing TradeHero," said TradeHero CEO Dinesh Bhatia.

TradeHero is also billed as the first social investment network, where users can make market comments and give advice on stock selection.

How TradeHero started
According to Bhatia, the idea of TradeHero came about after he suffered a significant loss on the stock market while working on a startup in the US in 2010. "I thought to myself, why is it that we (the man on the street) is always the greater fool and started researching more into the subject and realised that the odds were very much stacked against the retail investor in equities markets or anywhere institutions partook as well. I decided that the only way things would and could change is to harness a crowd-sourced effect in terms of tipping the scale and helping retail investors make much more informed decisions."

TradeHero plans to push out an Android version of the app, as well as expand to other markets such as Hong Kong and China. According to Bhatia, partnerships with large financial institutions and brokerages are being discussed as well. He added that multiple pivot points based on the basic premise of information brokerage will be developed, utilizing much of the current platform to accelerate development efforts.

"We are very optimistic about the future of TradeHero. Revenue and user growth is currently exceeding our initial targets and estimates and we hit our 12 month user target in just 2 months. We have processed over 400,000 stock transactions, with about US$50million worth of shares being transacted daily," he said.

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Company Profile:

Name of company: TradeHero (My Manisku Pte Ltd)
Founders: Dinesh Bhatia (CEO), Dominic Morris (CTO)
Website: www.tradehero.mobi <https://www.tradehero.mobi>
Major investors: TNF Ventures through the Technology Incubation Scheme under Singapore’s National Research Foundation
Total funding at hand: USD $600,000
Target fund: -
Source of funding: -
Start of operation: Mid Dec 2012