Who are you Finception?

We often get asked a lot of questions about who we are, what we do, our stock recommendations, the startup ecosystem, our motives, how we make money and if large corporate houses are funding us. So to clear the air on this and more, we thought we would do a Q&A Session with some of the most frequently asked questions. So here it is.

Who are you and what are your credentials?

Our team includes 4 full-time employees and 4 interns as of today.

The Analyst: Pawan is our NISM Certified Research Analyst and although we don't provide recommendations we still ensure that everything we put out meets a certain standard of quality and he ensures that all of our research is on point. He also has an MBA degree from IIM Ahmedabad and has been investing in the markets for about 4 years now.

The Writer: Shrehith is our writer. He takes all of the research and makes it lucid and engaging. Like Pawan, he is also a graduate from IIMA.

The Quant: Lokesh is our Quant. A master modeller and a Math Wiz, Lokesh is a graduate from IIT Delhi and was working with the Samsung Research before he joined us and he heads a very important project that we have been working on for a long time. More on that later.

The Manager: Bhanu is the startup manager. He manages everything else. From hiring to meeting prospective clients, it's his job to take care of everything. He too is a graduate from IIMA.

We also have 3 equity research interns who are all awesome, CFA Level 3 and CA aspirants and then we have a design intern who does almost all of our design work. She is awesome too.

What is your motive behind all this?

We really want to help the average investor. I know it doesn't sound believable but it's true. That was the only motive behind starting up. We did want to make some money in the process as well. But we wanted to do it whilst actually leaving a positive impact. It might sound idealistic, but if we don't dream at this age. When do we dream eh?

Why should I listen to you?

Considering Finception doesn't operate its own portfolio (yet) there is very little conflict of interest and our views are relatively less biased. So there really very little harm in listening to us. You might not agree with us, but that's okay. It's how you become a smart investor — By being sceptical.

So how do you make money?

Right now, we don't make any money from the blog. We have intended to keep the blog free (for now) because a significant part of our readership comes from beginner investors or students and considering the amount of content we generate every month it makes very little sense for us to charge a fixed fee. So it's free now.

How do you survive then?

Entrepreneurial grants. We are also in the process of setting up our own quantitative hedge fund. We plan to make some money there.

What experience do you have to run a fund?

We don't, which is why we are not going down the route of traditional investing. While we do publish stories every now and then, our overwhelming focus has been on developing quantitative trading models to eke out inefficiencies in the market. Our Quant, Lokesh and the others have been working tirelessly to aggregate large data sets and test out various hypothesis in order to develop a robust set of quantitative models and our hope is that with the rigorous backtesting, the experience won't be as much of a problem.

Can I invest in one of these funds?

Yes and no. Unless you are extremely rich and can afford to risk significant sums of money, you ideally shouldn't be anywhere near quantitative hedge funds. However, if you are still interested to know more or simply learn about what we do or if you know anybody else who might be interested, you can reach out to us on Whatsapp or Email — We will be happy to talk to you.

How do I work for you?

We are currently only hiring equity analysts and Data Scientists for short term internships (because we simply can't afford to pay full-time employees). However, if you want to work for free 🙏 or sweat equity you can shoot us a mail at [email protected] and we will get back to you.

Will you publish more often?

As you might have already noted, we only have 1 writer. While almost all of us have some experience in research and stock analysis, our writing experience is rather limited. So we are constrained on that front. If our writer falls sick (which he does quite often for some odd reason) we can't publish our weekly story and to hire more writers, we need money — money that we don't have. So if we receive enough funds either through donation, fundraising or other endeavours we will definitely publish more often.

Tell me Stocks where I can invest?

We won't because we don't think that'll do you any good. We make bets and we pray that they work out. However, instead of stock recommendations, we might have something more useful. We will be soon putting out a mock portfolio of stocks where we invest in our limited personal capacity. We will let you know when it's live.

Why don't you put a comment section? You promised one, remember?

Yes Yes, we know. We are extremely sorry for having delayed this one. But as a startup, we have so many things to juggle at the same time that we don't get time to do everything. However, we will get to it soon enough.

If you have more questions write to us on WhatsApp or [email protected] and we will update this link when we can.