PhonePe’s Rahul Chari eyes first-time investors as Share.Market becomes PhonePe Invest

PhonePe sees an opportunity to bring millions of Indians who invest in gold and mutual funds into the equity market, as the fintech major looks to expand beyond active traders and tap first-time investors through its rebranded investment platform, said founder and chief product and technology officer Rahul Chari.

The company today rebranded Share.Market as PhonePe Invest, integrating its stockbroking and investment platform more closely with its broader financial services ecosystem. The move comes with the launch of Portfolio Optimiser, a proprietary suite of tools designed to help users build, analyse and improve their investment portfolios.

“When we started Share.Market, it was designed actually to serve the active investors and traders,” Chari said, adding that this represented a relatively small segment of PhonePe’s wider user base.

The company now wants to reach people who have started saving through small, regular investments but have yet to enter equities. PhonePe allows users to invest in gold and mutual funds through daily systematic investment plans (SIPs) starting at ₹10, while lump sum mutual fund investments can begin at ₹100.

“PhonePe Invest is basically a bridge from PhonePe for the savers and the first-time investors to participate in the equity market,” Chari said.

He sees the opportunity extending beyond metropolitan and Tier I cities, where the adoption of smaller-ticket financial products has helped broaden participation in savings and investments. Describing this as the “sachet model” of financial services, Chari said the next phase of growth would involve converting some of these savers into equity investors.

“The opportunity for us now, as we continue to grow the active investor and trader segment, is to actually bring in the millions of users who are investing in their first mutual fund on PhonePe, or have been actively investing in gold,” he said.

Portfolio tools aim to simplify investing

The rebranding also reflects how PhonePe has evolved its broking platform from one primarily serving active market participants into a broader investment offering that seeks to guide users through their investment journey. PhonePe Invest offers stocks, initial public offerings (IPOs), mutual funds and futures and options (F&O), alongside the new portfolio management tools.

Portfolio Optimiser has three components: a portfolio builder, an analyser and an optimiser. The builder guides new investors through selecting investments across categories, including stocks, mutual funds and exchange-traded funds (ETFs). The analyser provides research-backed signals on whether holdings should be held, monitored or sold, while the optimiser suggests changes to improve diversification and portfolio health that users can implement with a single click.

The tools are also intended for experienced investors seeking a second opinion on their holdings. Users can bring investments held outside PhonePe into a consolidated view, Chari said.

The platform was developed over roughly a year, following research involving PhonePe users investing in small-ticket financial products and existing Share.Market customers. The research examined barriers preventing potential investors from entering equities and the tools existing investors wanted, pointing to the need to simplify the first investment and consolidate portfolio analysis.

PhonePe is also exploring artificial intelligence (AI) applications, including voice-enabled onboarding, multilingual summaries of news relevant to users’ watchlists and portfolios, and a chatbot that can answer questions about their investments.

Chari said the company wants users to understand their portfolios without having to navigate technical jargon or large volumes of financial information. “Trying to use language that is simple, hand-holding the user through the lifecycle and being there through the entire lifecycle of your portfolio continuously, is the approach that we have taken,” he said.

The company has not specified a target market size, with Chari saying growth would depend on educating users about the product and simplifying their investment journey. Existing Share.Market customers will retain their holdings and accounts, with no changes to brokerage structures, fee plans or annual maintenance charges.

“The rebranding was the last step,” Chari said, referring to the product development and research that preceded the launch.

(Written with PTI inputs)