CHENNAI: Stock markets too complicated to understand? Let alone risk investing your money in? You’re not alone. But online discount brokerage firm Zerodha is planning to entice those who shy away from the market into investing in it.
Zerodha Varsity, an educational module containing everything a layman needs to know about the stock market, is set to be translated into regional languages. The first, Gujarati, will be launched next week, followed by Hindi and others.
“The stock market is not hard to understand. But material that teaches people about them in an easy to understand way is non-existent,” said Karthik Rangappa, VP, Research and Education Services.
But that is exactly what Zerodha Varsity is about, with sections on everything from what the stock market is, to how to go about investing in an informed manner. It even includes chapters on analysing the stock market and sections on stock market jargon and their meanings.
The material and educational content on it, however, has always been in English. “We want to take this to the people who have been left out, and that means teaching people in their regional languages,” said Rangappa.
Market experts say that initiatives like these are essential to increase market stability. “Less than 1.5% of the population in India invest in the stock market and this makes it highly volatile because we are dependent on foreign investors,” pointed out V Nagappan, a market analyst and stockbroker from Chennai. In fact, the CEO of the Bombay Stock Exchange stated on Friday that the number of investors had actually fallen over the last 20 years.
But modules like Varsity address both major challenges in getting more people to invest in the stock market - a lack of knowledge and the perception that it is dangerous. “There are now many simple guides, but they are in English. If penetration is to increase, then you need to ed ucate people in the language they are comfortable in,” said Nagappan.
e-Platform in Tamil launched
Zerodha launched India’s first online trading platform for stock market investors in Tamil on Friday. The vernacular platform ‘Kite’ will let investors not comfortable with English to carry out operations in Tamil. The company has already launched platforms in other regional languages, including Hindi, Kannada, Malayalam, Punjabi, Gujarati, Bengali, Odia and Marathi.