Upstox. | PC- Shutterstock
Digital brokerage firm Upstox, which is backed by veteran industrialist Ratan Tata and marquee US venture capital firm Tiger Global, on February 17 announced the appointment of three senior executives to its leadership team with the aim to extend operations and move closer to its broader goal of encouraging more equity participation in India.
Upstox has appointed Harish Narayanan as Chief Growth Officer, Jayant Chauhan as Senior Vice President – Finance and Saurabh Agarwal as Vice President – New Initiatives.
Commenting on the new appointments, Ravi Kumar, Co-Founder and CEO, said, “I am confident that with them onboard, we will succeed in our endeavor to take Upstox’s products and services to the next level and fulfill our drive of encouraging equity participation across the nation.”
Narayanan will be responsible for driving full funnel business growth, marketing, operational excellence and strategic collaborations. Prior to joining Upstox, he served as the Chief Marketing Officer at Myntra, where he was managing all aspects of marketing and was leading the Brand Solutions and Creative teams.
Chauhan will be overseeing growth and profitability across multiple performance metrics. He was working as a SVP – Global Strategic Finance at OYO before joining Upstox and was a member of the global leadership team managing the strategic finance functions.
Agarwal, who will lead the company strategy and new initiatives, worked at Revolut India where he was in charge of capex and opex, product and business development, as well as hiring and license acquisition. He has also worked with Deutsche Bank and Paytm in the past.
The fast-growing online player having a current customer base of nine million provides online investments in stocks, mutual funds, digital gold, derivatives, and ETFs for both investors and traders. It competes with the likes of Zerodha, Groww and Paytm Money.
Formerly called RKSV Securities, Upstox was founded in 2008 as a proprietary trading firm and entered the retail brokerage space in 2012. The firm’s website lists Ravi Kumar, Kavitha Subramanian and Shrini Viswanath as the co-founders who had “the vision of making financial investing easy, equitable, and affordable to all Indian investors.”
The founders hold 50 percent of the company while Tiger Global Management has 31.1 percent stake in the company. 15.21 percent stake is held by Kalaari Capital Partners, GVK Davix Technologies hold 2.54 percent and industrialist Ratan Tata hold 1.33 percent stake in the brokerage firm.
