Gotrade Raises $7M To Unlock Global Access To US Equity Market

Gotrade, a fintech specializing in democratized stock market investing, formally announced Friday the closure of a $7 million seed funding round led by LocalGlobe, with participation from Social Leverage, Picus Capital, Raptor Group, among others.

As part of the development, Benzinga spoke with Gotrade founder and CEO Rohit Mulani.

About: “We’re bringing the best of the U.S. to the rest of the world.”

That’s according to Mulani, who founded Gotrade in 2019 to enable anyone in the world commission-free and fractionalized access to the U.S. equity market.

Based in Singapore, the company’s genesis was Mulani’s frustration with local barriers to market access.

“I was trying to get access to U.S. stocks, from Singapore, and the banks were charging $30 per trade, or 30 basis points minimum,” the CEO said. “It was really expensive and the barriers to entry were incredibly high.”

In Singapore, Mulani said it's very difficult to open a brokerage. One must physically go to a branch and fill out paperwork.

“I tried to open up a Robinhood brokerage account, but I couldn’t do it because you needed a Social Security number. That was effectively the genesis story.”

Moving forward, about three months ago, Gotrade launched as an invite-only pilot. The process took nearly two years given product development, as well as regulatory and licensing hurdles.

“We now have over 100,000 clients, from 145 countries, and it is growing pretty quickly," he said.

Differentiator: Gotrade comes as an end-to-end, consumer-focused broker built on deep know-how and passion.

A vision to create an investment world without borders, barriers, or minimums led Mulani to leaders like COO David Grant, the former CEO of Charles Schwab in Singapore.

“That changed the game for us,” Mulani explained. “Now we have somebody that brings a ton of experience and technical know-how to the team. That allowed us to start building really quickly, not just in terms of product, but also processes so that we could get this thing up and running.”

The company’s core differentiator, aside from talent and customer-driven technology innovation, is access. Gotrade offers commission-free and fractionalized access to all U.S. stocks, making it easier for less capitalized investors to participate and express their opinions in the biggest of stocks.

“Fractional trading is from $1 and anybody can get access,” Mulani said. “We also support local payment methods in 45 countries, now.”

A Note On Response: “Our engagement numbers are pretty off the charts,” Mulani said in a statement to Gotrade’s visually appealing interface that evokes brand ownership. “People open the app an average of 12 times a day, which is incredible and we don’t do anything to nudge them to do that.”

Visions For Future: Gotrade is focused on building a self-directed trading platform that provides the best trading experience.

In making that happen, Mulani and the rest of his team are hard at work on in-app education, given that 35% of people on the platform have never traded stocks before.

“There’s been a fundamental shift of people who have entered the market for the first time or now know about the market and are entering the market for the first time. I don’t think they’re going away any time soon,” Mulani said.