hi,
remember when fixed deposits gave you 9%? those were the days. you could park your money, forget about it, and actually beat inflation while sleeping soundly at night.
my uncle still talks about his 1998 fd like people talk about their first car. "11% per annum, beta. eleven percent!"
those days are gone. but what replaced them?
everyone's chasing equity returns; mutual funds, stocks, maybe some portfolio management if you've done well. meanwhile, bonds - the asset class where institutions actually park serious money, remain this mysterious, inaccessible thing that "someone else" invests in.
bonds have an image problem. they're the test match in a world obsessed with t20s. slow. steady. no fireworks. but ask any serious cricketer which format builds real skill.
but here's what nobody tells you: boring works. stable compounds. and unsexy pays your bills.
let me paint you a picture you've probably lived:
you decide to invest in bonds. good decision. you open an account with a platform, do your kyc (again), transfer money, buy some bonds. everything's fine.
then six months later, you want to switch brokers. maybe better brokerage rates, maybe better service, maybe your ca recommended someone else.
now try moving those bonds.
it's like buying a car that only runs on one company's petrol stations. your bonds are stuck. the platform owns your investment, not in name, but in practice. want to sell them? good luck finding liquidity. want to transfer them? even bigger headache.
this is the first problem: platform lock-in. it's not a bug, it's the business model.
here's the second: try finding accurate bond prices and yields without a bloomberg terminal. go ahead, i'll wait.
you can't. that bloomberg terminal costs ₹24 lakhs a year, by the way. casual.
what you get instead are scattered numbers on broker websites, outdated nse data, and if you're lucky, some excel sheet your ca's nephew made. meanwhile, institutions are seeing real-time prices, liquidity scores, credit analysis—the works.
the information asymmetry isn't accidental. it's designed.
third problem: most quality corporate bonds have ₹10 lakh minimum investment requirements. why? because the system was never built for retail investors. it was built for institutions, and retail was an afterthought.
and finally, liquidity. or rather, the ghost of liquidity.
bonds appear available when you want to buy them. try selling before maturity? it's like trying to return vegetables at a sabzi mandi. suddenly, nobody's interested.
we've made bond investing so complicated that even ca's avoid discussing it at parties.
the bond project is simple in concept, complex in execution:
a broker-agnostic bond trading and analytics platform.
what does that actually mean?
broker-agnostic: your bonds travel with you. trade through zerodha today, angel one tomorrow, upstox next month—your bond portfolio analytics and tracking stay with us. no lock-in. your investments, your choice.
transparent analytics: see what institutions see. real yields, credit ratings, liquidity scores, historical performance—without a ₹24 lakh bloomberg subscription. the information advantage shouldn't belong only to institutions.
accessible entry points: we're working to make quality bonds available at amounts that make sense for real investors, not just hni's.
liquidity visibility: know which bonds you can actually exit before you buy them. no surprises when you need to sell.
we're not trying to make bonds "sexy." we're trying to make them sensible, accessible, and honest.
revolutionary, i know.
version 1.0 will have rough edges. some features will take time to build. there will be bugs. things will break. we'll fix them, but they'll break first.
but here's what we won't do: we won't prioritize growth metrics over building something that actually works. we won't add fancy features that look good in demos but don't solve real problems. we won't make promises we can't keep.
our incentive is simple: build something that actually serves investors, not something that just looks good on pitch decks.
think of us as that nephew who's good with computers but actually listens to what you need- not the one who "fixes" things by making them more complicated.
since we're in the testing stage, the platform is completely free right now. you're helping us build this, so it costs you nothing.
this is where you come in.
we're looking for our first 50 users. not customers - founding members.
you're not guinea pigs in an experiment. you're co-builders of something that should have existed years ago.
why your experience matters:
you've seen market cycles. you remember the harshad mehta scam, the 2008 crisis, demonetization. you know what good service looks like because you've experienced enough bad service to spot the difference.
you've worked 20-30 years building your corpus. you understand the value of capital preservation. you know that 8% consistent returns beat 15% volatile returns when you factor in sleep quality.
what we're asking from you:
try the platform with an amount you're comfortable with. ₹1 lakh, ₹5 lakhs, whatever makes sense for testing.
tell us what works and what doesn't. we can handle criticism—we're indian, we grew up with it. be specific. "it's nice" doesn't help. (that's what your relatives say about your new haircut when they hate it.)
if you find it useful, tell two friends in your gymkhana, society, or ca's network. word of mouth from people who've actually used something is worth more than any marketing campaign.
be patient with early version quirks. we'll fix things fast, but they'll break first. that's the deal with v1.0.
share honest feedback, not polite nods. if something's confusing, say so. if a feature is useless, tell us. if you wish it did x instead of y, we need to know.
you're not doing us a favor by being polite. you're doing us a favor by being honest.
here's the serious bit:
india's bond market is worth ₹238 lakh crores. retail investors own less than 1% of it.
that's not just a statistic. it's a wealth transfer—from individual savers to institutions—happening quietly, year after year.
you've worked decades building your corpus. you deserve the same tools, information, and access that institutions have. fixed income shouldn't mean fixed disadvantages.
every financial advisor tells you to diversify into bonds. but have you noticed they never explain how to do it properly? there's a reason for that.
the infrastructure doesn't exist. the transparency doesn't exist. the portability doesn't exist.
until now, nobody bothered building it because retail bond investors weren't a large enough market to matter.
but you matter. your ₹10 lakhs matters. your need for stable, predictable returns matters.
and when 50 of you become 500, and 500 become 5,000—suddenly, the market has to pay attention.
this isn't just a platform launch. it's a correction of something that's been wrong for too long.
we're building the bond project for people who've earned the right to straightforward, honest investing.
your generation built modern india. you shouldn't have to decode modern finance.
we'd be honored to have you join us, not as users, but as partners in building something that works the way it should have from the beginning.
no jargon. no tricks. no fine print surprises.
just honest bond investing, the way you deserve.
if this sounds like something you'd want to be part of, we're ready when you are.
if you'd like to know more about me and my background, here's my linkedin profile.
here's to making fixed income actually work for the people who need it most.