Braving the torrential rains that crippled the financial capital yet again for five days from August 16, a Sebi enforcement team led by a deputy general manager knocked on the doors of finfluencer Avadhut Sathe's doors early morning on August. This was at Karjat, a popular weekend getaway north of the megapolis.
Sathe had been under the regulatory radar for long and the first complaint against him reached the Sebi headquarters in 2023. The officials braved the highly inclement weather to launch a search and seizure operations at his home and the academy.
For the record, Sebi has not named him officially or issued a statement as has been the case when it acted against people like him. All that Sebi whole-time member Kamlesh Varshney would tell journalists on Thursday was "Yes we've carried out a big search operation on a big name in the finfluencer industry. I must give credit to my team who has been working on this. I can't comment much further until we examine the evidence that has been collected."
According to a Sebi official who is aware of the development, the search and seizure operation was a long-planned one and meticulously prepared. After beginnning early Wednesday (August 20), it went on to last until the next day evening.
Court approvals were obtained in advance, movement patterns were tracked, and a reconnaissance was carried out before the raid that seized his digital devices and trading data for forensic analysis.
Sathe was under the Sebi radar for giving stock recommendations under the garb of investor education. In the past, Sebi had issued strictures against individuals indulging in such activity.
Sathe's rise to a popular finfluencer began with him dabbling in the markets since 1991, has been phenomenal—from growing up in a chawl in Dadar, central Mumbai, to reportedly owning stocks worth hundreds of crores today. After an engineering degree he moved overseas for a job and has worked in the US, Singapore, and Australia.
After finding success in investing and trading, he quit the job and decided to train students full-time from 2008. And that's how the Avadhut Sathe Training Academy (ASTA) in Karjat, where participants can get a three-month gurukul mentorship programme with graduation certificates began.
Sathe has gone on to build a sprawling training empire by blending trading, spirituality, and salesmanship. He set up the academy in 2008 with one location. Today, it has 17 branches across the nation—from Mumbai, Delhi, and Bengaluru to smaller cities like Bhubaneshwar, Kochi, and Nagpur and offers training in English, Hindi, Tamil, Marathi and Telugu. Online classes are also offered for international students and he claims he has students from the UAE and even the US.
The academy has a dedicated social media following and his YouTube channel boasts of nearly 1 million subscribers, while his Instagram account has more than 2,37,000 followers. A three-month residential training costs between Rs 21,000 to Rs 1.7 lakh.
According to ASTA website, Avadhut is "a man with a compelling vision of achieving financial independence for every class of people, and a successful trader with over three decades of trading and investing experience."
Sathe became a viral sensation in 2023 when he was seen dancing in a large hall in his Pune academy, in front of a screen flashing with live tickers. Though many joked about the unusual method of his teaching, his students joined in on the celebrations.
His YouTube page highlights customer success, ranging from a homemaker who made 50% on her capital in three months to another housewife who breached the Rs 1 crore barrier in just 30 months from trading.
In fact, he has been facing the heat for some time now as many finfluencers and market participants began to tag him as a fraud and scamster. They also accused him of misleading investors for personal gains through his training academy, where the curriculum goes beyond technical learning as he has integrated psychology, yoga, sanskaar, and satsangs.
Sathe's credibility was waning even before the Sebi crackdown. Finfluencers and analysts were shunning him and was grouping him with the likes of Asmita Patel and PR Sundar, both criticised for aggressive self-promotion and questionable market practices.
Sathe also advises students on penny stocks and provides other tips over private Whatsapp groups. These recommendations involve Sathe working with operators or promoters to push such stocks onto the unsuspecting students, who would buy en masse.
Various reports said his training academy has been growing in leaps and bounds—his fee income was estimated to be around Rs 17 crore in 2021, which more than doubled to Rs 37 crore in 2022 and then jumped to Rs 86 crore in 2023. In 2024, it would have hit Rs 116 crore, and the estimate for 2025 is around Rs 200 crore.