IBA student’s ‘Investify Stocks’ app gains popularity

Launched to cater to traders, keeps track of multiple portfolios

KARACHI:

If you have multiple portfolio investments in the Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX), but are unable to keep track of all of them on the go and in real time, you are just one tap away from what appears to be a tool to address precisely this problem.

Investify Stocks Pakistan is designed as a real-time stock manager app to be used as a personalised stocks watchlist and portfolio tracking tool, which provides instant access to the PSX with market data including fundamental and technical details of all stocks.

Only five months into its launch, the app has been getting notable traction and receiving rave reviews from customers on Play Store.



The October-2015 start-up has received 4,800 downloads already while maintaining its retention rate and engagement level with active users standing at 3,000. The app’s daily active users have reached 1,200. The app’s free version is touching 5,000 installs, while the paid version, which charges $20, has also been downloaded by more than 30 people since the launch.

“We weren’t expecting to grow this quickly,” app founder Rafiq Lightwala told The Express Tribune, adding that youth’s interest in the app was “most encouraging”.

“We’ve received a number of emails where people unfamiliar with online trading at PSX have found this app simple to use,” said Lightwala, who is currently pursuing an MBA degree from the Institute of Business Administration, Karachi.



With the app still in its nascent stage, Lightwala has been approached by angel investors willing to buy a stake - something he isn’t considering at the moment.

So what is helping Investify Stocks Pakistan get all this traction when there are already a bunch of finance apps available in the market?

While studying at LUMS, Lightwala and a lot of his colleagues used to trade on the PSX but failed to find any app that would meet their specific needs.

Explaining, the IBA student said there were multiple portfolio tracking tools and apps around the world but not a single one existed in Pakistan. This is when Lightwala and a lot of his friends felt a strong need for a decent portfolio and watchlist app.

The apps that were already present in the market, Lightwala said, were purely trading apps operated by brokers and had their own limitations. For example, they could be used by the brokers’ clients and required users to log in every time. The designs were outdated while they lacked in features, such as notifications of news or market close, fundamentals and technical information.



One of the major problem with those apps, Lightwala said, was clients with multiple brokers could not track a portfolio in one app.

It was this market (gap) that the app aims to tap into. In fact, portfolio tracking and watchlist tools, which are the distinguishing features of the app, are the most viewed screens on Investify Stocks Pakistan, according to Lightwala.

However, the aforesaid features are not the only services offered by the app.

The app provides users with market data, such as live trading, company profiles, earnings and dividends information, trading volumes, highs, lows and bid and offer prices as well as daily market movers (active, gainers and losers).

It helps users create a personalised watchlist for selected stocks and facilitates portfolio management allowing users to track personal portfolio for daily and total returns for individual stocks as well as combined returns.

Besides providing top business stories from Pakistan (currently from one news website), the app also sends notifications and alerts on market close and daily performance of the KSE-100 Index.



“We think going forward in the next few years, a lot of recent graduates looking for investment opportunities are going to start exploring the PSX and that is where we see the potential,” Lightwala said, adding that he wants to finish the iOS version and introduce new features, such as alerts on price movements of select stocks.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 24^th, 2016.

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