Darts India: Empowering Customers with Tools & Data for Informed Trading Decisions
Darts India Private Limited (i-darts) is a software company specializing in building time critical information delivery products and applications for Capital Markets. Stock Exchanges, Brokers, and financial intermediaries use i-darts products to gain competitive advantage and deliver value added service to their clients. Following is an excerpt where the Founder, Venkatachari gives us a walkthrough of the company's operations and approach.How do you see the market for Capital Markets Technology evolving in India? What are the major factors driving the growth of this market?
These are two different questions, let me answer them separately. I won't be exaggerating if I say Technology has been and will continue to be at the heart of the Capital Markets Industry. Technology in Capital Markets is evolving in more ways than one. At one end, the sheer volume of data, transaction load and number of users will drive adoption of Cloud in a big way. On the other end, we will see increasing influence of social media and mobile technologies as users spend more time in these places. We have to remember that technology is only an enabler; we need applications that provide insights and facilitate users to make informed decisions. AI, Machine learning combined with traditional tools like Charting, analytics and more. will make further inroads into the Industry. User Experience and data visualization will be-come very important as users become more discerning.
Several factors are driving the growth of the Capital Markets in India. Increased awareness about markets changing demographics, low returns from alternate investments, lower transaction costs and greater risk appetite are fundamentally the reasons. Of course the ease with which users can open an account and start trading certainly helps.
Tell us about the challenges that your clients encounter and accordingly how does Darts India help clients overcome these challenges? Our clients include both discount as well as full service brokers. They are all confronted with increasing competition, reducing market share and eroding margins. These challenges are further intensified by new well- funded entrants who are launching very innovative plat-forms.
We help our clients with a differentiated platform and offer a flexible 'Pay as you grow engagement model'. We align with their goals. Our platform offering which covers all three channels - Desktop, Web and Mobile helps our clients attract new customers with a unique value proposition, and increase brokerage revenues from existing customers who see lot more trading opportunities on the platform. It helps clients reduce their total cost of ownership with optimized solutions that require lower server capacity and network bandwidth. The platform facilitates the research teams with tools that can generate calls and also helps dealers with actionable information.
What are the major factors that set you apart from other players in this segment?
We remain focused on providing the best market information and analytics platform that offers seamless trading capabilities integrated with many popular OMS. Our suite of products includes a Desktop (Exe) version besides web and Mobile. Most players have exited the Exe space, while we continue to invest in it because we believe active traders need a powerful trading front end. Our user centric approach helps our platform constantly evolve with feedback from customers. We release a new feature or an enhancement every eight weeks. The quality of our historical and other value added data is amongst the cleanest and most reliable. They are also hosted with us further reducing the cost for our clients. We take care of all BOD and EOD processes thus significantly reducing the workload for our clients.
Please elaborate on your flagship product Dartstock Power?
Dartstock Power is a destination platform. It is where traders will finally come when they realize the breadth and depth of its offering is needed for them to remain profitable. It combines real-time market data, news and advanced tools & functions wrapped in intuitive user interface to deliver unparalleled market experience. It is a platform for active traders, dealers, franchisees, research analysts and affluent retail investors. It empowers them with real-time information, data visualization features, smart scanners and advanced charting tools to spot opportunities and stay on top of market movements.
What other offerings do you put on the table that serve the Capital Market industry?
Sure. Let me walk you through them.
Dartstock Web & Mobile - Though we were late entrants, our web and Mobile offerings have gained significant traction in the last couple of years. They offer unique insights, advanced charting tools, multiple dash-boards, themes, user preferences all of it delivered in a clean interface. Extensive use of Info graphics makes it an instant hit.
Dartstock Market Watch - Our Exchange specific Platform is used by couple of leading Exchanges. They are designed to help exchanges reach out to a wide audience. This is being offered on a managed services model.
Dartstock API services - We have developed an extensive set of APIs to deliver real-time, historical and value added data. Third parties and brokers subscribe to these APIs to build their own application or consume quality data.
How has leadership at Darts India helped propel the business?
Our board of advisors are highly accomplished and experienced Industry professionals. They bring in complementary skills.
Ram Srinivasan our Management Advisor brings tremendous Global Technology and Business experience having worked with Tech leaders including Microsoft, Oracle and Sun Micro systems in the US. He helps us with strategy and shaping the future.
Yogesh Sundaram (Masters in Finance & CFA, US), our Domain Advisor helps us navigate the intricacies of Capital Markets and Investment domain with his rich experience in equity research, quantitative trading, and financial products design.
Dr. Sanjay Krishna (Doctorate in Data visualization, US) our technology advisor helps us with product design and architecture and visual data analytics.
What is the future roadmap for Darts India? How is the company gearing up for the same?
On the product front, we plan to build advanced analytics and real-time scanners. We will also be making significant enhancements to our range of web and mobile products. We are also aggressively expanding our FinTech product development vertical to serve clients in US and other geographies.
Is there anything you would like to add?
Yes of course. None of this would have been possible without our highly talented and committed team. They have all been very working hard with a single minded objective of providing the best products and most responsive technical support. I thank all of them for their valuable contributions.
Dartstock Power is a destination platform. It is where traders will finally come when they realize the breadth and depth of its offering is needed for them to remain profitable. It combines real-time market data, news and advanced tools & functions wrapped in intuitive user interface to deliver unparalleled market experience. It is a platform for active traders, dealers, franchisees, research analysts and affluent retail investors. It empowers them with real-time information, data visualization features, smart scanners and advanced charting tools to spot opportunities and stay on top of market movements.
What other offerings do you put on the table that serve the Capital Market industry?
Sure. Let me walk you through them.
Dartstock Web & Mobile - Though we were late entrants, our web and Mobile offerings have gained significant traction in the last couple of years. They offer unique insights, advanced charting tools, multiple dash-boards, themes, user preferences all of it delivered in a clean interface. Extensive use of Info graphics makes it an instant hit.
Dartstock Market Watch - Our Exchange specific Platform is used by couple of leading Exchanges. They are designed to help exchanges reach out to a wide audience. This is being offered on a managed services model.
Dartstock API services - We have developed an extensive set of APIs to deliver real-time, historical and value added data. Third parties and brokers subscribe to these APIs to build their own application or consume quality data.
How has leadership at Darts India helped propel the business?
Our board of advisors are highly accomplished and experienced Industry professionals. They bring in complementary skills.
We help our clients with a differentiated platform and offer a flexible 'Pay as you grow engagement model
Ram Srinivasan our Management Advisor brings tremendous Global Technology and Business experience having worked with Tech leaders including Microsoft, Oracle and Sun Micro systems in the US. He helps us with strategy and shaping the future.
Yogesh Sundaram (Masters in Finance & CFA, US), our Domain Advisor helps us navigate the intricacies of Capital Markets and Investment domain with his rich experience in equity research, quantitative trading, and financial products design.
Dr. Sanjay Krishna (Doctorate in Data visualization, US) our technology advisor helps us with product design and architecture and visual data analytics.
What is the future roadmap for Darts India? How is the company gearing up for the same?
On the product front, we plan to build advanced analytics and real-time scanners. We will also be making significant enhancements to our range of web and mobile products. We are also aggressively expanding our FinTech product development vertical to serve clients in US and other geographies.
Is there anything you would like to add?
Yes of course. None of this would have been possible without our highly talented and committed team. They have all been very working hard with a single minded objective of providing the best products and most responsive technical support. I thank all of them for their valuable contributions.
