As told to Gaurav Kapoor

Venkat Rangan, co-founder and CEO, Market Simplified Inc., explains the mobile trading phenomemon that is catching up in India

Could you brief us about the services you provide and the stock markets you cover?

Market Simplified Inc., a leader in providing state of the art mobility solutions to financial institutions, has been instrumental in capturing and defining the ingredients of a rich, robust, and customer centric mobile financial application. Being domain focused, Market Simplified’s expertise lies in developing rich customised applications for brokerages, banks, wealth management, insurance, advisory and financial services companies. Its a middleware platform and engagement model has proven to be an immense value addition to institutions’ revenue enhancement and customer experience initiatives. Apart from India, we have a strong presence in US, Middle East and Singapore.

How can a consumer use your service? Are you offering a free to download application?
We engage with financial institutions such as brokerage firms to develop their client facing applications. At this point in time, all these institutions are offering this application for free.

How long have you been in India and what is your subscriber base at present?
Market Simplified was incorporated in the year 2007. In India, we already have more than 175,000 plus people using the applications developed by us. In total, we have over 350,000 traders on our platform globally.

How big is mobile trading industry worldwide and what are the prospects in India?
Globally, our clients and other brokerages have reported at least five to seven percent of their trade coming via mobiles. This has been a compelling story for us and the figure is bound to go upwards. The utility, convenience and empowerment that mobility provides are greatly appreciated by individuals and institutions in the financial sector. In India, with a mobile subscriber base of more than 800 million, customer acquisition, financial inclusion and increasing the investor base in total, will be done through mobile phones. This is because of the limited reach of traditional trading and Internet. The value add that the already superior and well entrenched mobile infrastructure provides will hardly go unnoticed by financial institutions. Hence, you see tremendous focus of brokerage firms on mobile since SEBI’s regulations on mobile trading were released.

NSE’s adoption of mobile trading platform is a strong sign of change in this sector. What are your views on that?
NSE’s entire mobile suite – the application on its NOW platform – has been developed by us. This has greatly fuelled the mobile trading need in the country. Giving access to millions of people across the country is a great initiative by NSE.

On which platform do you see the maximum number of downloads?
In India, a significant number of downloads happen on Java based phones, followed by Android and then BlackBerry.

How do you see the growth of your company in the coming days?
We are witnessing great acceptance and usage of mobile for financial transactions. With the adoption of new technology, we see a tremendous growth in application development space. We will focus on the financial sector and develop applications targeting this space. Our focus is only banks and financial services institutions (BFSI) at this point in time.

Please find below a News Article from Watertechnology.com titled as above, from the author Max Bowie

Bloomberg’s latest initiative, a research service called Bloomberg Industries, couldn’t be better-timed. The service—described on the vendor’s website as “our major Data Products launch for 2011”—provides industry- and company-level research and analysis at a time when firms and investors are in dire need of tools that consolidate relevant information and make sense of it.

On the positive side, a recent report from international law firm Allen & Overy claims that a rise in hostile merger and acquisitions activity signals growing market confidence. Actually, this isn’t at odds with the uncertainty experienced in other areas: Companies are taking advantage of uncertainty in some markets to snap up strategic acquisitions, while also seeking out diverse revenue streams that can protect them through any prolonged economic woes. And to find the potential acquisitions that will deliver the best returns, you need—you’ve guessed it—tools that provide the best research and insight.

Industries provides something that increasingly matters more than data alone—insight that adds intelligence to information. It’s in the same vein as Bloomberg View, the opinion section of Bloomberg News that the vendor introduced in May—to provide a clear view and context that cuts through the plethora of often-conflicting news to deliver clear insight.

The current economic environment is creating even more demand for tools that give traders and investors an edge through insight and commentary. According to recent surveys, market confidence is either falling or rising—depending on exactly what business you’re in—with investors caught in the middle, trying to understand the dynamics of a market that may be completely new to them, and where data alone is no use without the tools to interpret it correctly.

NYSE Euronext last week released the results of a survey of European investors, conducted between December and April, which shows an overall positive outlook for investors in stocks, bonds, exchange-traded funds and other products. However, a poll announced last week by investment management consultancy Investit shows that senior investment managers are less confident of the business environment now than they were at the start of this year.

Underlying this fall in confidence are concerns over sovereign debt—not just the beleaguered Greek economy, but also in the US, which Moody’s last week placed on review, citing the “rising possibility” that the government would not raise the country’s debt ceiling in time to prevent a default—and that recent economic rallies may be a respite between symptoms rather than a cure.

This uncertainty is causing private and institutional investors to change their investing habits. In its first-half trading statement, Börse Berlin noted that equities trading—usually the staple of private investors—had declined by 7.6 percent as a share of the exchange’s business, while the number of bond trades grew by 26 percent, which the exchange attributed to investors becoming increasingly fearful of the Greek debt crisis and the potential for global inflation. In terms of other asset classes, mobile trading technology vendor Market Simplified reported a 350 percent increase in foreign exchange trading on its platform over the past year. Meanwhile, a survey of investor education practices released last month by technical analysis software vendor Recognia shows that active traders who manage their own money are increasingly looking for effective tools to educate them about new trading strategies and risk management.

Ironically, according to Investit, “the near-universal business response” to the changing climate is for firms to look for opportunities to expand into new markets, while trying to understand which products are profitable or not—both of which require a keen understanding of markets and products that may be new to the individuals responsible.

What are the essentials of a ‘perfect’ mobile product? Over the recent past innumerable software experts have highlighted key aspects that pave way to developing a desirable product. Taking a sneak peek at what really matters in the beginning is the most crucial aspect: Product specification & User Interface.

The definition and detailing of the product specification is always the most crucial element in developing a desirable product. It plays the role of a highly intuitive and pre-set GPS system. Any diversion from the path set, this should serve the purpose of indicating such a deviation. The importance of this is more so in a mobile product especially when an enterprise is making an effort to render the set of functionalities across a multitude of mobile OS and replicate the same with homogeneity.

Now with the dynamic mobile ecosystem, it becomes increasingly difficult to capture the essence of product specification without, maybe prototyping a detailed user interface. Hence, the implied dependence on each other. Simple documentation often cannot adequately describe the intended look and feel of a product. A beneficial effect of user interface prototyping is that it can be an effective way of deep focusing both the customer and the development team. A working software is good for customer and the business stakeholders. A product that remains to be homogeneous for most apart across enterprises, will suffice with a perfectly working software / application to make the blue print of the product specification.

More specific to User Interface, it was very well highlighted by Gerard Beck that there are three pillars to an application’s success:

• Features
• Functions
• Face

‘Features’ refers to what the application will do for the user.  Features are the requirements for the software.

‘Function’ refers to how well the software operates.  Bug-free software will function perfectly.  ‘Face’ refers to how the application presents itself to the user – the application’s “user interface.”

In this context, to have the most desirable and beautiful ‘Face’ it becomes extremely important to understand the users of your application.  Understand the user’s job, how the software fits in with that job and how the user goes about getting the job done. Think like a user and you are half way there. Behave like one while designing and you are almost there. Satisfy your curiosity while using the application and you are completely there.

In the financial sector, most product functionalities are similar in nature between competitors. What becomes critical is the user interface. How the user connects with the company, how easy and convenient is the usability of the mobile product and how consistent is the functioning of the product. Try to bring out one special aspect with user experience that would differentiate an enterprise significantly and capture the customer’s mind space.

News Highlights 

iPad A New Technology Paradigm – A Reluctant Admission:

The internet  along with client-server and wireless computing  are driving the next new technology paradigm: The Age of the iPad.

Top Wall Street firms adopting mobile trading, MarketSimplified partner brokers shine in the      Barron’s review:

MarketSimplified, a mobile strategy partner to top brokers in the US and across the globe, expressed its views on the importance of going mobile and the additional value the adoption to tablet devices such as iPAD will bring forth.

Making the Right Connection:

In Barron’s 16th annual online-broker review, social networks and iPads are in; commission cuts are out. And we crown a new champ.

The New Speed of Money, Reshaping Markets:

In many of the world’s markets, nearly all stock trading is now conducted by computers talking to other computers at high speeds.

Capital Markets Outlook 2011:

What will the hot technology trends be for capital markets firms in 2011?

The ‘Ad’ Edge
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KPZ8JhY4R2Y – iPAD 2