Vivek Bajaj cofounder of Elearnmarkets Image: Debarshi Sarkar for Forbes India
PR Sundar grew up in a middle-class household. After he moved to Gujarat for a teaching job, he found himself surrounded by stock market experts, and he too decided to invest in the stock market. Due to a lack of capital and knowledge, he was only active in the primary markets, applying for initial public offerings (IPOs) and selling them for a small profit. He received a fantastic offer to teach in Singapore when he was 29 years old, where his first month’s salary was roughly 20 times higher than in India.
Sundar returned to India at the age of 44 and decided to re-enter the capital markets, this time with more money saved. He decided to pursue a career in option selling, after dabbling in the cash and futures markets. “I trade based on probability because I am a mathematician. The winning probability in the cash and futures markets is 50 percent. It is much higher in option selling,” he says.
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Around the time Sundar arrived in India, a lot was going for options trading. Following the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy, people began to recognise the value of options, and the volume of options began to rise. This, combined with the Securities and Exchange Board of India’s (Sebi) lower taxation and the introduction of discount brokerage in India, made option selling a very profitable business. The National Stock Exchange (NSE) is now the world’s largest derivatives exchange, and Nifty Bank, which debuted around the same time, has grown to become the most traded index option.
Sundar’s passion for teaching resurfaced around 2013-14, when his broker recognised him as one of the few clients with consistent profits. Sundar went from being a trader to a trainer after he was approached by his broker to teach others. “My first few trainings were free, and the broker initially covered the basic costs associated with training. Eventually, I began to appear as an expert on a local television station, Sun TV,” he says.
People began contacting him for workshops, for which he charged Rs 3,000 each. He has built a name for himself over the years, and his two-day workshop now costs Rs 60,000, while his mentorship costs Rs 20 lakh. His mentorship programme, which began in 2019, cost Rs 3 lakh-plus GST back then. Sundar recommends a capital of Rs 10 lakh and Rs 25 lakh for one-day and two-day workshops, respectively, and a minimum capital of Rs 2 crore for mentorship. “Mentorship is like a practical training programme where people come to my office and stay with me for a month or two to watch me trade.” He typically attracts high net worth individuals (HNIs) as clients due to the high minimum capital requirements. His growth has been phenomenal over the last two years, both of his courses and his YouTube channel.
The Covid-19 pandemic lockdowns, which began in March 2020, saw a slew of new traders and investors enter the stock markets. Throughout the pandemic, all stock market-related businesses have experienced phenomenal growth, with educational businesses at the forefront. It not only increased every trainer’s income but also increased the number of trainers. People who were stuck at home looked to the capital markets as a source of income. Coupled with cheap and easily accessible mobile data and lower trading costs with discount brokerages, all that was required for trading was a smartphone. Zerodha, India’s first discount brokerage firm, saw an increase in users, as did Varsity, its educational portal.
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