Meet Kavitha Subramanian: Co-founded Investment Platform, Crossed Rs 1000 Cr Revenue Mark

Online brokerage firm Upstox crossed the Rs 1000 crore revenue mark in FY2022-23. The investment platform, which was founded back in 2009, achieved a user base of 10 lakh by 2020 and then grew 10 times in just two years to reach the milestone of one crore customers in May 2022.

Reportedly, Upstox witnessed over 40 percent increase in its operating revenue in FY2022-23 and managed to surpass its rival firm Zerodha in terms of growth rate.

Kavitha Subramanian is among the three co-founders of Upstox who is responsible for taking the brokerage firm to new heights. The other two are Ravi Kumar and Shrini Viswanath.

Kavitha Subramanian looks after growth, finance, strategy, and customer experience at Upstox. She worked as a private equity investor at Leapfrog Investments for over two years and also worked at Actis Investments for more than four years before co-founding Upstox in 2009. Kavitha served as a management consultant at McKinsey and Co. and also worked at SMS Microfinance.

The co-founder has experience working with rural women where she helped them gain access to capital and financial growth. Kavitha obtained a B.Tech and M.Tech degrees in Electrical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Bombay and did her MBA from the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, US.

Upstox got the license to start its trading business under RKSV Securities Pvt. Ltd. in 2010. Two years later, it got into the retail trading space and reached the turnover of Rs 4,000 crore in 2014. Upstox received $4 million worth of funding from Kalaari Capital in 2016 and was backed by Emeritus Chairman of Tata Sons Ratan Tata the same year.

In 2019, the trading platform got investment from Tiger Global in a Series B funding round and received another round in 2021. This took Upstox’s value to $3.5 billion and the platform got a spot on the list of Indian unicorn startups.

Upstox today competes with some of the popular trading platforms including Zerodha, Groww, and Angel Broking. It became the official partner of TNPL, IPL, and ICC in 2021 and the next year, its trading turnover breached the Rs 60,000 crore mark.