For ages, government in India craved to get user participation on the board but were not able to – owning to a wide number of reasons. One of the most detrimental reasons was cost and resources. But with the advent of smart technology things have changed, and now there is more rural participation than there was ever before.
Returns: the core reason for participation
For a close to decade now, there are only two avenues that have completely outsmarted all other modes of investment – stock market and the real estate. There was one key problem with the latter, for the market is understandably more obscure and the high cost of initial investment kept the investors at bay. But the former was easily accessible and worked on a very specific modulus operand.
Ease of handling
Amongst the two top sectors, real estate was too cumbersome, and there was almost little or no scope to handle property. Yes, there were some companies that used analytics and extensively used technology, but the sector never looked very logical. But when it came to stock markets, there were first resources like desktop software and now apps that have increasingly made it easier for investors to roll their sleeves and foray into the stock markets.
Today, investors can get started at zero initial cost and trade with as little as thousand bucks. Of course, the absolute amount does vary, but it is all on the investor’s willingness and ability to invest in the markets.
Apps: a real breakthrough in the field of stock markets
Apps have been detrimental in not just reinforcing but also in advancing the lead between the two sectors, with apps, users could configure it to do anything as per their wish and could program right from alerts, etc. all this made stock market apps a real hit amongst the users. And as a result, at this point in time, financial market apps are experiencing highest growth across all the segments – piping even the entertainment sector.
Today there are potentially hundreds of millions of investors who are ready to take the new leap, and many of them have already jumped into it. Along with it, tight regulations make financial markets an attractive spot for investments.
Is it working?
If the number were to go anything by then yes! For instance, one of the most popular app, IIFL Markets is now looking set to cross over one million downloads in a few months and has over 80% positive feedback – an unprecedented feat by any yardstick. Soon the company might as well acquire 10 million downloads.
The most interesting thing to note from the data is that it is accessed from over 1500 odd locations in India. So even if we strike out top 100 locations as tier A and tier B cities, it would leave us with 1400 semi-urban and rural locations, which is significant by any measure.
All this points out to one thing, the fact that the resurgence of mobile apps is imminent.
