Stockgro

Stockgro is India's largest experiential learning platform in the stock market space, which helps users learn about the stock market in the most safest and simulated environment, the platform allows users to practice stock trading through virtual money and extends the ecosystem to advisory and learning through content with Stockgro Academy

​

Stockgro is a 3-year old startup emerging in the fintech space as one of the strongest educators of basic finance and the stock market, the co. has been able to acquire 35 million users across India and cover 1000+ colleges across the country through collaborations, partnerships and long term signings, the core fundamentals of the co. is to educate the average consumer to learn the right points before doing actual trading in these stock market

https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/business/india-business/stockgro-x-etmarkets-empowering-indians-with-financial-literacy/articleshow/109645721.cms

​
Stockgro funnel

Problem statement area

Stockgro partners with educational institutions, corporates, govt. bodies and NGOs to drive user groups onto the Stockgro platform, we will be looking at solving problems at the top of the funnel to solve onboarding of users at scale

​

Problem statement

Stockgro has partnered with over 1000+ colleges to scale users at a faster rate, Stockgro needs to access more channels and at a quicker rate for user onboarding, Stockgro needs to explore large strong partnerships online or offline to drive strong user numbers and consistent channel

**Solving only for educational institutions as a boarding area

A litmus test for partnership-led approach

​

Litmus test results: The analysis here is that Stockgro wants to solve the problem of acquiring more users, tapping into new channels, driving power usage and also fitting in the user requests, which leads to partnership-led growth as a viable direction for action

Offline partnerships

Stockgro has already ventured into partnering with educational institutions at a university or a college level to lead financial literacy programs within college curriculums thereby onboarding huge groups of students onto the platform

https://www.business-standard.com/content/press-releases-ani/chandigarh-group-of-colleges-cgc-jhanjeri-introduces-stock-market-literacy-with-stockgro-124030700545_1.html
https://www.theweek.in/wire-updates/business/2024/06/05/dcm3-stockgro.html


Online partnerships

Stockgro has limited online partnerships that are often temporary, several platforms have reached out for a single or multiple collaborations but for a limited amount of time, the scope to create channels for consistent user onboarding at a higher scale remains open

As per the above analysis, Stockgro should explore a channel or an integration-led partnership online for ease of execution, speed of onboarding, speed of achieving metrics, deploying minimal operations work and asynchronous flow of users

Identifying the right partner

Stockgros features

Who is your ICP?

Users who are interested in entering the stock market for the first time, partially understand the stock market, or know the market but need to gain confidence with actual trading. The target age group ranges between 18-25. The younger audience is increasingly interested in finance, driven by the growing emphasis on financial literacy

What are your brand values?

StockGro's brand values focus on education and empowerment, providing a market simulator platform for risk-free stock trading and learning. Emphasis on community engagement, access to financial education and building trust through transparency. Additionally, demystifying stock market education to everyone

What is your current market? (Types of companies, industry sectors, geographical reach)

Stockgro currently operates with two major markets, educational institutions and corporates both of which have high-intent users looking to learn and invest across India, there is sufficient intent from Tier 1-2-3 India based on current operations

List of possible partners and partner fitment test

Unstop (Student-centric, discovery platform around competitions, internships, coding, etc) - 80L users

Slick app (Student social media platform) - 3500 colleges touched

Zero01 by Zerodha (Learnapp) - 243k YT subs and 38000 paid learn app subscribers

CollegeDunia

What does your partner gain from this partnership?

Engagement and learning on all the mentioned platforms is hard to upkeep unless new features are added and new spaces for the users to interact with, this requires high effort in creation, testing, adoption and monetization instead the partners can utilize Stockgro's state of the art market simulator that has been used by over 1000+ colleges across the country for engagement, learning and digital activity without any geographical restriction (The ecosystem exists on the App store, Play store and Website)

- This in turn will boost engagement, retention, platform stickiness and new feature introduction without any cost or time for the partner platform

*The below-mentioned platforms have been researched and thoroughly gone through, no such market simulator or finance learning ecosystem exists in any of their services

Potential Partners for outreach

Scoring method - Yes - 1; Maybe - 0.5, No - 0

Unstop is the clear choice for partnership here as
- 80L students who have enrolled in the platform to participate, discover, compete and practice
- Unstop native offerings in the practice arena are skewed toward computer science (Will improve offerings)
- Unstop doesn't have any native competition towards the stock market or any integration that students can launch and compete (Will improve offerings)
-Stockgro integration will keep the users tied to the platform - User retention 1min> per month and the Bounce rate is 44% (Will improve retention %)
- Demand generation is great but stickiness is quite less (Assumption - catering to only a small set of users)

Few examples-
CS practice areas only

No Native competitions (Nor any integration with any app) - Purely a marketplace

*Data source quoted below

Outreach to the POCs

List of POCs

(Based on actual profiles from Unstop)
- B2B Partnership
- Regional Manager Strategic Partnerships
- Revenue and Partnerships Manager
- Program Manager(Growth)
- Growth & Marketing
- Revenue & Partnership
- Brand and Growth

Scoring method - Yes - 1; Maybe - 0.5, No - 0

​
B2B partnership person would be ideal, Regional manager of strategic partnerships would be the perfect person to connect with but assuming the number of reach-outs, they would want to asses it from the B2B person for the viability of the partnership

*We can rope the B2B regional head later in the conversation

​

Outreach strategy

Channel 1: EMAIL

Subject: Drive Student Engagement and Boost Retention Metrics with Stockgro Integration

Hi *B2B Partnerships Manager’s Name*

I hope this email finds you well. I’m Sushmith from Stockgro, India’s largest experiential learning platform in the stock market space. I am reaching out regarding a mutual interest between our users; many use Unstop to drive discovery and participation in Stockgro’s virtual trading competitions (237 events in competitions - 95% powered by Stockgro)
https://unstop.com/competitions?oppstatus=expired&searchTerm=virtual%20trading

We at Stockgro have collaborated with over 1000+ colleges nationwide to host virtual trading competitions under their college banners. Participants often advertise our competitions on Unstop to drive demand beyond their geographic locations. However, we’ve noticed a lengthy user journey from showing intent to participation, involving installation, sign-up, and competition entry, leading to a significant drop-off.

Having utilized Unstop in my previous organization to drive internships and host various competitions, I would really appreciate the potential for a simpler integration to streamline user engagement.

I propose a collaboration to integrate Stockgro into the Unstop platform, allowing students to launch virtual trading competitions without leaving the Unstop ecosystem. This integration would streamline demand collection and participation, reducing drop-off rates and retaining users within Unstop.

I’ve reviewed Unstop’s metrics using some external tool and I believe this integration could improve bounce rates, retention rates, and open new user segments.

I would greatly appreciate the opportunity to discuss this further. Please let me know if you are available for a call or meeting to explore the possibilities.

Thank you
Best regards,
Sushmith

Follow-Up Email 1

Subject: Following Up: Enhancing Student Engagement with Stockgro & Unstop Integration

Hi *B2B Partnerships Manager’s Name*

I hope you’re well. I wanted to follow up on my previous email regarding a potential collaboration between Stockgro and Unstop. Integrating Stockgro’s virtual trading competitions directly into the Unstop platform can significantly boost user engagement and retention for both our platforms.

Would you be available for a brief call to discuss this opportunity further? I am confident that our collaboration can drive meaningful results for both our user bases

https://unstop.com/competitions?oppstatus=expired&searchTerm=virtual%20trading

Looking forward to your response

p.s We hosted 3 virtual trading competitions yesterday that were hosted on Unstop

Thank you
Best regards
Sushmith

Follow-Up Email 2

​

Subject: Reminder: Let’s Discuss Stockgro & Unstop Collaboration Opportunities

Hi *B2B Partnerships Manager’s Name*

I hope this message finds you well. I’m reaching out to follow up on my proposal to integrate Stockgro’s virtual trading competitions with Unstop. This collaboration could streamline user engagement and significantly improve retention metrics for both platforms.

Can we arrange a call or meeting this week to explore this further? Your insights would be invaluable in shaping a successful partnership that benefits both our communities.

Thank you for your time and consideration. I look forward to your response

https://unstop.com/competitions?oppstatus=expired&searchTerm=virtual%20trading

p.s The students have started to reach out for virtual trading competitions as the season for college just started

Thank you
Best regards
Sushmith

​

Channel 2: LINKEDIN

Hi *B2B Partnerships Manager’s Name*

I hope you’re well. I’m Sushmith from Stockgro, India's largest experiential learning platform in the stock market space. We see significant synergy between our platforms, as many of our users discover Stockgro competitions via Unstop.

P.S. Yesterday, we successfully hosted three virtual trading competitions driven by Unstop, showcasing our potential synergy

A Competition is live as we speak: https://unstop.com/competitions/vista-2024-fast-forward-a-virtual-trading-competition-vista-2024-iim-bangalores-international-business-summ-1064422

Could we schedule a call this week to discuss a potential collaboration to streamline user engagement and boost retention?

Looking forward to your response.

Channel 3: COLD CALL

Pitch points-
* Introduce Stockgro and speak of common points that create value across both platforms
* Speak about how often Stockgro competitions gets listed on Unstop (Data sharing)
* Speak about user intent vs long funnel to Stockgro competition
* Reveal user requests and utilisation of both the platforms
* Propose the product integration into Unstop for mutual benefit
* Share the metrics that can be improved upon integration
* Open up other areas of potential collaboration and co branding with benefits

First call design

(Values) Unstop aims to:

1. Democratize hiring by connecting students from any academic institution with top companies.
2. Provide a platform for competitions, hackathons, and other engagement activities.
3. Offer upskilling resources such as courses, articles, and workshops.
4. Facilitate end-to-end hiring solutions for companies.
5. Enhance student engagement through virtual competitions and events
6. Offer more engagement areas for the students to adopt and learn from
7. Expand its user base and geographic reach
8. Become a global platform for early career professionals.

Though Unstop at the Top aims to be a one-stop platform for job readiness, competitions and upskilling, upskilling is crucial to the platform that already hosts many coding prep, projects and competitions


​

​
After assessing both platforms, we identified common problems that can be addressed through product integration. Unstop has a strong inbound funnel but suffers from a high bounce rate of 44% and retention of 1min> per month. While their high-level offerings are impressive, they are primarily tailored to science students. Commerce and arts students have limited engagement and access to relevant content. Integrating Stockgro can diversify and enhance Unstop’s offerings, increasing retention and engagement across all student demographics

Unstop is essentially competing with Geeksforgeeks, Codechef and many other platforms that offer similar or higher offerings

Stockgro comes in with a market simulator that no other platform has to offer with a proven record of student engagement, return value, easy launch and utilisation

Reverse integration: Users from Stockgro can also launch virtual trading competitions and use Unstop integration to directly advertise the competition to lakhs of users from Unstop ​

Conclusion -

Business metrics met through Stockgro integration for the partner -

- New Interactive Engagement platform
- Improves offerings for Commerce and Arts - Bounce rate
- Improves retention time as users will spend time between Stockgro and Unstop
- Reverse integration will ensure users from Stockgro also utilise Unstop for promotions - More retention time
- Co-branding opportunities for bigger markets

**Tools used for benchmarking and metrics measure - Similarweb

During the call

Stockgro: Hi Unstop, thanks for meeting. Excited about our potential collaboration.

Unstop B2B Partnerships Manager: Hi, great to meet you too. How do you see our platforms working together?

Stockgro: We propose integrating Stockgro’s virtual trading competitions into Unstop to streamline user participation.

Unstop B2B Partnerships Manager: Sounds promising, how would this improve our metrics and benefit us ?

Stockgro: It would enhance engagement, retention and improve on more offerings to capture a broader audience and offer them a seamless solution for native competition hosting

Unstop B2B Partnerships Manager: How would the technical integration work?

Stockgro: Our tech teams can collaborate to create a seamless interface, we already have equipped our systems to accommodate all possible scenarios for launching a virtual trading competition, the integration would require user detail mapping to capture details from our end for basic user creation on the platform

Unstop B2B Partnerships Manager: That sounds interesting and are there any other collaboration areas?

Stockgro: Co-hosting webinars and workshops on financial literacy, as we have a range of expert SEBI-registered personnel with us who can deliver webinars on basic finance, personal finance, wealth building, advanced technical analysis, careers in finance and over all stock market that can be for a broader audience (The can open up a new section of edu. materials)

Unstop B2B Partnerships Manager: Great idea. How do you suggest we handle branding?

Stockgro: Joint marketing through social media, blogs, newsletters and in-app notifications, as well as co-branding on both the platforms real estate

Unstop B2B Partnerships Manager: Let’s set up a meeting with our tech and marketing teams to check the feasibility of this but it sounds very interesting

Stockgro: I’ll coordinate and send some points for you to further pitch to your team, hoping the partnership can take shape as soon as possible

Unstop B2B Partnerships Manager: Looking forward to it.

Stockgro: Thanks, we will talk soon

After the call follow up

Subject: Next Steps: Stockgro & Unstop Collaboration

​

Hi Unstop B2B Partnerships Manager​

Thank you for the productive discussion and your time for the same, I am excited about the potential collaboration between Stockgro and Unstop, summarising our conversation and outline the next steps:

Key Points Discussed:

- Integration Embedding Stockgro’s virtual trading competitions into Unstop to enhance Ustops user engagement, retention, and expand offerings + reverse integration for on stop promotion place

- Technical Collaboration: Our tech teams will collaborate to create a seamless interface. This will involve user detail mapping to facilitate basic user creation on our platform

- Additional Collaboration: Co-hosting webinars and workshops on financial literacy, featuring SEBI-registered experts covering topics such as basic finance, personal finance, wealth building, advanced technical analysis, careers in finance, and stock market insights

- Branding & Marketing: Joint marketing efforts through social media, blogs, newsletters, in-app notifications, and co-branding on both platforms

Next Steps:

1. Schedule a Meeting: Lets set up a meeting with our tech and marketing teams to discuss the feasibility of integration and marketing plans, we can start with the tech integration to kick things off

2. Detailed Proposal: I will send over a detailed proposal and key points for you to present to your team, talking points, metrics and opportunity areas

3. Coordinate Timelines: I will be sharing a common timeline over google docs for both of us to keep track of the integration steps and meeting with the various stake holders

I am looking forward to your confirmation on the meeting schedule. Let’s make this partnership a success!

Thank you
Best regards
Stockgro

Company buy-in and alignment

👉🏼 Stakeholder Team Concerns:​

1. Alignment and business goals: Clear alignment is required from both the parties, articulate how Unstop and Stockgro collaboration can help both work on business problems, namely creating new channels of user onboarding, improving offerings thereby increasing engagement and retention
2. Longevity of the contract: Both the stakeholders need to agree that the integration will need more depth in terms of execution, comparing metrics, hypothetical modeling of metric success and based on that it can be a 3-4 month experiment zone ->> later leading to a permanent partnership
   
   
   👉🏼 Product Team Concerns
   a
3. Integration timeline and bandwidth: Buy in from the product team on an MVP to begin with and later enhance the processes but nonnegotiable on user experience and speed of launch
4. Data sharing: Give the product team a detailed breakdown of data storage limits, create tags and limitations of the users who interact from both platforms (Other data need not be exposed or introduced to this flow)
   
   👉🏼 Growth Team Concerns:
   
5. User adoption: The team needs to experiment with an MVP to create the initial traction for finished enhanced productisation and metrics across the process need to be tracked (User participation and user hosting virtual trading platforms)
6. Cannibalisation of users: There should be a mutual handshake by both the parties on limitation of user utilisation and exchange, such that the terms of the agreement can be revisited later on for a stronger and bigger exchange of value
   

Building trust

​

👉🏼 Building Trust:

• Alignment from day one end goals of both the parties, clear communication and documentation of the same, alignment -> Buy In -> Move forward (repeat the loop till execution or end it)
• POC appointments - Introduce your partner to primary, secondary and tertiary teams and keep open channels for all sorts of communication (Fallback channels - digital, tele or in office drop ins)
• Alignment on metrics and transparency - Figure out primary and secondary metrics that have to be shared and updated bi-weekly for quick action and keep the metrics transparent but limited to the campaign + frequent updates
• Quick response and delivery: Have systems and additional personnel to address quick response and on-point delivery timelines to show the promptness and seriousness of the campaign
• Security - Initial contract to show the seriousness of the collaboration and cover extreme edge cases in case either party acts indifferently from the initial terms
  
  👉🏼 Transparency and intent
• Build intent and clear timelines to showcase targets to reach and if not, create fallback plans to achieve the same, the partner also has to be equally excited to spare bandwidth and provide micro solutions for small metrics optimization
• Keep metrics open and limited to the campaign on an open dashboard shared between both parties
• Evaluation of performance - Share daily metrics, quantitative and qualitative to all the stakeholders and a weekly update on ups and downs
• Resolution space - If any actions or any concerns arise out of both parties, the parties need to discuss them whilst keeping the partnership at its merits
  teams
  
  👉🏼 Showcase the co-brands
• Use the might of your socials to announce to the world that Stockgro has collaborated with Unstop to improve its efforts on financial awareness to a larger set of people and ease of access
• Do a news digital PR if both parties are comfortable, based on the above collaboration Unstops seems to appreciate such a collaboration announcements
  
  

​
Plan and launch GTM

Core problem solving

The core problem that we are trying to solve is a smooth user experience that will connect both the platforms (Hosting and engagement platforms) to give the user a seamless experience while meeting personal business goals
while

Problem in detail: Many users launch a virtual trading competition from Stockgro and list it on unstop for bigger reach, the user then has to direct all the traffic back to Stockgro through an elongated process for which a simple integration will solve the problem

Demand for problem-solving

There are about 237+ currently listed virtual trading competitions on Unstop and about 95% of the platform has Stockgro as a base platform for hosting the same

Note*
(The 'n' of competitions that Stockgro has hosted are much greater than 237)
(Current showcasing is based on Unstops systems to showcase the expired competitions to a certain date)

​
Unstop and Stockgro cater to the same set of audiences between 19 to 25 students belonging to the same category who are in search of jobs, competition, practice forums and like minded communities

​

ICP spends most of their time on similar student-centric apps like Stockgro, unstop, slick and other social media platforms

Value matrix

Marketing and metrics

The proposition of user journey exists between platforms and since integration/reverse integration has been discussed above, we need to envision a user journey touch points and final execution

Before that, we need to market such an integration and its benefits, both platforms have sizeable social reach, platform real estate and other areas to announce to the world about the integrations

Here are some product integration screens that I have crafted for visualisation from a user perspective
*Mock representation of integration (Certain elements currently don't exist on Unstop)

Unstops Practice Arena

​

Unstops competition arena

Reverse integration (Available only for the host)

​

The base data source for reference and assumptions-

​

​

​