🧲 Acquisition project | StockGro

🧲

Acquisition project | StockGro

Section I: Understanding the Product & the User

Understand the product

ABOUT STOCKGRO

StockGro is a stock market education platform that makes trading and investment learning risk-free, fun, and easy. The platform provides users with bite-sized educational content, a community of experts and peers to exchange ideas with, and virtual cash worth Rs.10 lakh to build stock portfolios in real-time market conditions. Users compete with peers in Preparation zones and are rewarded for building top-performing portfolios.

It's core features are:

Risk-free learning with virtual cash in real-time market simulations
Expert guidance for reliable stock market advice
Community support to engage with peers for fun learning
Bite-sized content to simplify complex financial topics
Rewards & recognition for high performing Prep Zone participants

Understand the user

Potential StockGro users are young, educated individuals who are financially unaware, have low capital, and zero risk-appetite. StockGro addresses these problems through its community driven experiential learning platform. Here are some common traits of the ideal consumers evaluated :

Ideal consumers are:

- Young, educated, financially unaware individuals

- are students, early-career professionals

- mostly single, rarely married with minimal dependents

- usually have limited disposable income, can't afford to spend frivolously

- are just beginning to build financial power

- love spending time on social media, online learning, networking

- are active on Instagram & Snapchat primarily, followed by LinkedIn & Twitter

- wealth creation, financial independence, peer respect motivate them

- crave for social validation & instant gratification

- fear losing money, financial insecurity, and missing out on trends

- look up to social media influencers, rich investors & people with flashy lives

- are restricted by parents from experiments due to fear of losing money, low capital & risk appetite

- and feel that risk-free learning & expert guidance are the solutions

- lookout for community support & validation while learning a new skill

- aspire to be successful in growing wealth & improving social status

- are usually tech-savvy, and understand basic english instructions

- have very short attention spans and prefer quick, engaging content

- want education to be bite-sized, community driven & practical first

- follow & wish to copy influencers, successful traders

- need to balance all other activities with education, job

Influencers & Blockers

Influencers :

Friends & colleagues, stock market lovers around them

Social media personalities who glamourise financial literacy & an aspiration life

Growing stock market involvement, a bullish market

Blockers:

Parents who could consider this a deviation from studies/job

Institutes & corporates where most of their productive market hours are spent

Bearish market sentiment, high volatility, market crashes

Create & Prioritise Ideal Customer Profiles

	ICP 1	ICP 2	ICP 3	ICP 4	ICP 5
Ideal Customer Profile Name	Soham Shah	Shalini Mishra	Aditya Roshan	Vikram Patel	Shikha Sharma
Age	16-20	33-40	21-26	28-35	20-25
Goals	Learning with friends Earning rewards,	Financial independence Improving social status	Investing salary better peer recognition	Wealth creation Social validation	Create an easy source of income
Income Levels	None	>Rs. 15 Lacs	Rs. 6 lacs	<Rs. 45 Lacs	None
Gender	Male	Female	Male	Male	Female
Location	Surat	Noida	Chennai	Mumbai	Ranchi
Student or Employed?	Engineering Student	Mid level job	First job	Second Job	Educated but not employed
Companies	NA	MNC	Startup	IT Company	NA
Dependents	None	1 Child	None	Parents	None
Marital Status	Single	Married	Single	Single	Single
Where do they spend time?	Instagram, Snapchat	Instagram, Youtube	Instagram, LinkedIn	Twitter	Moj
Pain Points	Frustrated with boring college education, social exclusion when friends discuss market	Fear of losing money, complex content	No reliable community of experts, Low capital but investment aspiration	Financial insecurity FOMO	No knowledge, Wants an income source
Current Solution	Learning from friends Random online courses	Rare financial webinars Youtube videos	Telegram groups LinkedIn / Insta influencers	Invests in mutual funds on tips from family friend	Still exploring one
Risk Appetite	Low	Low	Medium	High	Low
Capital	Low	High	Low	High	Low
Time & Interest	High	Low	Medium	Low	High
Willingness to Learn	High	Low	High	Medium	Low
Prioritisation Framework
Adoption Curve	Low	High	Low	High	Low
Frequency of Use Case	High	Low	High	Medium	High
Have an Appetite to Pay?	Medium	High	High	High	Low
TAM (Sizeable or Not?)	Sizeable
Distribution Potential	High	Low	High	Medium	Medium
Selected ICP	Yes	-	Yes	-

Based on the above table, ICP 1 and ICP 3 are shortlisted for the purpose of this project.

Learn the product category

Keywords potential users might be typing

learn stock market trading

learn investing

learn stock market

stock market learning course

online trading

simulated trading

best way to learn stock market

stock market academy

stock market course

Learn stocks online

learn trading online

learn trading

learn trading strategies

learn stock investing online

learn share market

practice trading

practise trading

learn investment strategies

practice trading online

stock market india

how to make money in stocks?

how to be a successful trader?

how to invest?

Competition on Search Intent

Ways to make money as a student

How to get rich

Steps to become financially independent

What is trading

What is investing

What is stock market?

What is share market?

Different ways to earn money

What is technical analysis

What is fundamental analysis

How do people make money through stocks?

How to not lose money in trading

Top 3 competitors (your strong & weak points vs them)

Competitors	StockGro's Strength	StockGro's Weakness
Dalal Street	Stronger community based learning	Lack of advanced tools
BullSpree	Direct access to more experts
FrontPage: Stock Market Clubs	Extensive, user friendly learning content	Expert community, more asset classes

Position of the Product in this category

StockGro leads the market with a robus community of over 100 SEBI Regd. experts, and 35 million users who rely on its unique learning model of learn, chat, play, earn. The app offers extensive bite-sized content, risk-free avenue to practise stock market trading and investing, and instant gratification through rewards!

Section 2: Market Sizing & Marketing Pitch

Total Addressable Market

% of population in India aged between 16 to 30, educated, are in college, first job or second job, have basic financial literacy, have appetite pay to learn about the stock market,

Serviceable Addressable Market

% of of TAM in tier 1 & tier 2 cities

Serviceable Obtainable Market

% of SAM that has tried trading & investing through at least 1 Demat account in the family

Calculation

Description	##	Source / Assumption
Demat Account Holders In India	151,400,000	Source
Unique Investors (of all demat holders)	80,000,000	Source
% aged b/w 18-30 years	36%	Source
# aged b/w 18-30 years	28,800,000
# of people in this age bracket not catered to	360,226,570	27% of 1.4 Billion Indians are aged between 16 to 30
% of them with them with basic education	74%	Assumption based on literacy rate in India
#of them with them with basic education	266,567,662	-
% of them aspiring to create wealth through stocks	90%	-
TAM	239,910,896	-
SAM	74,372,378	Of 31% of India's population which is considered urban, tier 1 & 2 cities combined account for approximately 60-70%
SOM	37,186,189	assuming only 50% of them are willing to pay 2,500 to learn & get started

Marketing Pitch (Branding Framework)

What is your product really in the business for?

Easy stock market education

Risk-free trading practice

Community engagement and support

Rewards and recognition for learning

What problem does your product solve?

Lack of financial knowledge

Fear of losing money while learning

Limited access to expert guidance

Need for a supportive learning community

What are customer benefits?

Risk-free learning with virtual cash

Access to expert advice

Engaging and interactive learning modules

Opportunity to earn rewards and recognition

Community support and peer interaction

How is user currently solving the problem?

Learning from friends

Random online courses

Telegram groups

Following linkedin/instagram influencers

Jobs to be Done

As StockGro is a new product in the existing category of stock market education, it needs to solve for

distinctiveness
and preference

Core Proposition

For [young, aspiring traders & investors]
who [wish to learn about stock market without any risk],
StockGro is [a social market education platform] that offers
[risk-free, practical learning with expert community support, rewards & recognition]

Marketing Pitch

Pitch for ICP 1

Learn trading & investing with friends,

Become a Pro & earn rewards

Tired of boring stock market courses?

Test your strategies with virtual cash
Practise and earn rewards!

Pitch for ICP 2

Chat with certified experts,

Practise trading & investing real-time,

become the Super Trader / investor!

Chat with certified experts,

Practise in real-time stock market,

and invest your money better!

*Each pitch is catering to a unique product promise

Section 3: Stage of the Product & JBTD

Identify stage (PMF, early or mature scaling)?

The product is now available pan India, has acquired a sizeable user base through channels like performance marketing ads, referral 1.0 & partner activation with schools & colleges. Therefore, it is now in mature scaling stage.

In the early scaling stage, the product relied heavily on feedback driven, cheaper & faster channels like word of mouth through beta launch in colleges and meme based content marketing to activate this user base.

Mature Scaling - Channel Selection Framework

Performance marketing ads & Referral were the 2 channels identified for scaling in this stage:

Channels	Effort	CAC	Flexibility	Lead Time	Scale
Google / Meta Ads	Low	Low	High	Short	Huge
Referral	Low	Low	High	Short	Medium
Content Loops	High	Medium	Low	Long	Huge
Founder Branding	High	High	Low	Long	Limited
Product Integration	High	Medium	Low	Short	Huge
Partner Network (Institutes / Corporates)	High	Low	Low	Long	Medium

Section 4: Mature Scaling Acquisition Channels

Channel 1 : Paid Advertising

ICP & Channel Selection
(Student, 16-20 years | Instagram, Snapchat)

Problems to solve for

CAC has been increasing on account of lower conversions
(possibly due to overtargeting, creative/ad fatigue)
As a result, quality of converting users is dropping

Potential Solutions

Refresh ad cohorts with improved keyword & user preference targetting
Update creatives, A/B test with different marketing pitches
Temporarily scale down campaign budgets, to subsequently identify & scale the winners from the A/B test

CAC - LTV & LTV to CAC Ratio

CAC is Rs. 15 [Total money spent / total numbers of customers acquired]
Rs.12 lac spent annually on Instagram / 80,000 users acquired = CAC of Rs.15
LTV is Rs. 5,760 [Avg. Order Value x Frequency x Retention]
Rs. 2400 spent over 12 months at an assumed 20% retention
LTV / CAC is 384 : 1
For every Rs. 1 spent on acquiring a customer, Rs. 384 is generated during the lifetime of that customer

Define how you will choose audience on it

Location - Advertise in tier 1 & 2 Indian cities

Demographics -

> age - 16 to 30

> gender - male, female

> education - high school & above

> employement status - employed or unemployed but searching

Interests - personal finance, stock market, trading, investing, tv shows on money, mutual funds, stocks, shares

Consumer behaviours

> purchased a stock market course

> Created an SIP, opened a demat a/c

> Followed a finfluencer

Connections - People following finfluencers and stock market news & meme pages

Lookalike Audiences - Zerodha, Smallcase, BullSpree, Investywise, Finshots, MyFinology, UnFinance

PMF is the highest here because this cohort has high interest, time & willingness to learn, and the product solves their goals of learning with friends while earning rewards.

Accordingly, following 2 creatives were built :

Meta Ad Mockup

Screenshot 2024-06-08 at 1.18.28 PM.png Screenshot 2024-06-08 at 1.20.38 PM.png

Screenshot 2024-06-08 at 1.20.21 PM.png

Channel 2 : Referral

Problems to solve in Referral 1.0

- No exponential reward or incremental milestones defined

- Poor targetting of happy customer & follow-up tracking mechanism

Potential Solutions

Redesign the referral program as per the framework, with emphasis on

1. Identification of Aha moments,

2. incremental rewards

3. better referral management.

Referral Framework for 2.0

Define what is brand worthy about the product

- Competition like real-time market experience

- Redeemable rewards for participating & learning

What is the platform currency?

- Money (bonus cash that can be redeemed for merch & higher tier platform subscriptions)

- Dopamine (access to power user prep zones with higher rewards / better stakes)

Who will you ask for referral?

Of all the user stories, users will experience an AHA moments across these touchpoints :

- after a withdrawal experience was rated 4 star & above

- after a bonus cash redemption order for merch was rated 4 & above

- renewed or upgraded subscription plan (StockGro Plus) 2nd time in a row

- won a prep zone & ranked in top 10

- completed StockGro academy & received a bragworthy certificate (shared atleast once eg: LinkedIn)

How will they discover it?

- withdrawal completion page - banner image

- merch order completion page - banner image

- Subscription payment completion page - banner image

- Prep zone ranks page - in-app notification (after completion)

- StockGro academy certificate page - banner image

Why will they share?

Incentive - Bonus Cash & Access to exclusive prep zones

Perception - Positions user as a super trader / smart investor

How will they share it?

Invitation code exclusive to the user shareable on social media & messaging apps

Channel Prioritisation

1:1 or 1:few communication primarily via WhatsApp, Instagram, Snapchat
(1:Many may seem desperate, hence users will prefer sending a DM over a broadcast story)

How will users keep referring?

1st referral - both get Rs. 150 bonus reward
20 successful referrals - Advanced subscription plan of Rs. 200 at zero cost (at a CAC of Rs.15, these 20 users would otherwise have been acquired at Rs.300)
40 successful referrals - Premium StockGro shirt free (otherwise listed on merch store at 6,000 bonus cash - CAC down from 15 to 12.5)
80 successful referrals - Access to power user only prep zones with min 5,000 Rs. starting reward

(From 2nd referral onwards, every referee gets only. Rs.50 Bonus Cash)