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Stock Market Basics
45 courses
Building Watchlists and Screens on Screener.in
A hands-on guide to using Screener.in to build watchlists, run pre-built screens, and write your own custom queries to filter Indian-listed companies by the metrics that matter to you.
- Navigate Screener.in and read a company's ratio page correctly
- Build and organize watchlists to track companies you're interested in
- Use Screener.in's pre-built screens to shortlist stocks fast
Case Study: DMart's IPO and Consistent Compounding Story
Avenue Supermarts (DMart) is one of the few Indian IPOs that lived up to the hype and kept compounding for years after. This case study walks through the business before it listed, how the IPO was priced and why it popped on debut, what actually made the growth sustainable, and what a retail investor can realistically take away from the story without falling for hindsight bias.
- How DMart's supermarket business model actually made money
- How the DMart IPO was priced and why it was oversubscribed
- What a large listing-day pop does and doesn't tell you as an investor
Case Study: HDFC Bank, A Blue Chip Balance Sheet Breakdown
HDFC Bank is the stock every Indian investor is told to own, but few can explain what its balance sheet is actually telling them. This case study takes HDFC Bank as a working example and walks through what makes a stock a genuine blue chip, where to pull real financials from (annual report, screener.in, NSE filings), why a bank's balance sheet reads nothing like a manufacturing company's, and how to judge asset quality, profitability, and efficiency using the bank's own reported numbers. Built for anyone who has HDFC Bank in their portfolio, or is considering it, and wants to move past the brand name to the numbers underneath.
- Why HDFC Bank counts as a blue chip, and what that label actually requires
- Where to pull a bank's real financials from: annual report, screener.in, and NSE filings
- Why a bank's balance sheet reads nothing like a manufacturing company's
Case Study: Nykaa IPO and New Age Company Valuations
Nykaa's 2021 IPO was one of the loudest listings in Indian market history, and one of the hardest for retail investors to value using the rules that work for a bank or an FMCG company. This case study walks through the IPO itself, why traditional valuation metrics broke down for a company built on GMV and take rate instead of steady profit, and what that means for how you read any new-age listing that comes next.
- What Nykaa's business model actually is, and why it listed the way it did
- Why P/E and other traditional ratios don't work for loss-making or thin-margin new-age companies
- How to read GMV, take rate, and unit economics like an investor instead of a headline reader
Case Study: Paytm's Listing Day Crash and Valuation Lessons
Paytm's November 2021 listing remains the sharpest lesson Indian retail investors have had in what happens when hype outruns valuation. This case study walks through the IPO, the crash, and the year that followed, then uses that real sequence of events to teach you how to evaluate any IPO on its numbers instead of its narrative.
- What actually happened to Paytm's stock on listing day and in the months after, in sequence
- How Paytm was valued going into the IPO, and why that valuation was hard to defend against Indian financial peers
- How to read the risk factors and financials in a red herring prospectus instead of skimming the summary
Case Study: Suzlon Energy, A Cautionary Tale for Retail Investors
Suzlon Energy went from India's most hyped wind energy IPO to a textbook case of shareholder wealth destruction. This course walks through exactly what happened, chapter by chapter: the debt-fuelled global expansion, the promoter pledging, the repeated equity dilution, and the governance signals that were visible all along. You will learn to read the same balance sheet ratios, pledging disclosures and auditor notes that flagged trouble years before the stock collapsed, so you can spot the same pattern in any stock before you invest in it.
- How to read debt-to-equity and interest coverage ratios like a skeptic, not a cheerleader
- What promoter share pledging signals about a company's real financial health
- How repeated FCCB conversions and rights issues dilute retail shareholders over time
Case Study: Tata Motors DVR vs Ordinary Shares
A real Indian case study in owning the same company through two different share classes. Tata Motors traded both ordinary shares and DVR (Differential Voting Rights) shares on the NSE and BSE for over a decade, at a persistent price gap, until a 2023 scheme of arrangement folded DVR shares into ordinary equity for good. This course walks through why DVR shares existed, what investors actually gave up and gained by holding them, why the discount never closed, and what the eventual merger teaches about pricing minority rights in a listed company.
- What Differential Voting Rights (DVR) shares are and why companies issue them
- Why Tata Motors issued DVR shares in 2008 and what holders received in exchange for reduced voting rights
- Why Tata Motors DVR shares traded at a persistent discount to ordinary shares, and why voting rights alone don't explain it
Case Study: The IRCTC IPO and Listing Day Pop
IRCTC's October 2019 IPO listed at more than double its issue price and became the textbook example every Indian retail investor references when they talk about IPO pops. This case study walks through how IPOs actually work, what made IRCTC's specific IPO so oversubscribed, what happened on listing day, and the decisions retail investors had to make in the hours and weeks after. It is built to leave you able to evaluate the next hyped IPO on your own terms instead of on hype.
- How an IPO is priced, subscribed, and allotted in India, from price band to listing
- Why IRCTC's IPO specifically attracted such heavy retail and QIB demand
- What actually happened on IRCTC's listing day, and why the stock moved the way it did
Case Study: Vodafone Idea, Investing in a Distressed Stock
Vodafone Idea went from a market-leading merger to India's most-watched distressed stock, an AGR bill in the tens of thousands of crores, a government-owned stake, and a share price that retail investors keep buying anyway. This case study walks through what actually happened to Vi and uses it to teach a repeatable framework for evaluating any distressed stock, so you can tell a genuine turnaround candidate from a story that just feels cheap.
- How the Idea Cellular-Vodafone India merger set up Vi's current crisis
- What the AGR dues judgment actually did to Vi's balance sheet
- How to read debt, equity dilution and government stakes as distress signals
Case Study: Yes Bank Crisis, What Retail Investors Should Have Seen
Yes Bank went from a Nifty favourite to a boardroom-ordered moratorium in under four years, wiping out retail shareholders and AT1 bondholders along the way. This case study walks through what the bank actually was, the governance and asset-quality warning signs that were visible years before the collapse, how the RBI-led rescue actually worked, and what any retail investor can apply from this story to their own portfolio decisions today.
- Why Yes Bank was a retail investor favourite before its collapse
- How to read an RBI divergence report and why it matters
- How promoter share pledging signals financial stress
Case Study: Zomato IPO, Evaluating a Loss Making Business
A worked case study on Zomato's 2021 IPO: why a loss-making company could list at a premium, how to read its financials without a P/E ratio to lean on, how the market valued it, and what happened to the stock afterward. Built for a first-time investor deciding how to evaluate the next new-age IPO that comes along.
- Why Zomato's IPO was controversial and what made it different from a traditional listing
- How IPO mechanics work in India, from DRHP to listing day
- How to read a loss-making company's P&L and unit economics instead of just its bottom line
Circuit Breakers, Price Bands, and Market Safeguards
A beginner-friendly, India-specific guide to the safety mechanisms that stop the stock market, and individual stocks, from free-falling or spiking out of control. Built for first-time demat holders, college students, salaried professionals, homemakers, and retirees who have seen a red 'lower circuit' banner on their Zerodha screen and wondered what it actually means. Covers market-wide circuit breakers on the Nifty and Sensex, stock-specific price bands, real Indian episodes like the March 2020 halt, and SEBI's additional surveillance frameworks (ASM and GSM), with practical guidance on how to check circuit limits on Zerodha and Screener.in and avoid getting stuck on the wrong side of one.
- Understand why markets use circuit breakers and price bands
- Learn how market-wide breakers and stock-specific bands work
- Trade smart around circuit halts and price limits
Contract Notes, Settlement Cycles, and KYC Essentials
A beginner-friendly, India-specific guide to the paperwork and plumbing behind every trade you place. Built for first-time demat holders, college students, salaried professionals, homemakers, and retirees who have opened a Zerodha or Groww account, received a contract note by email, and never quite understood what it says or when their shares and money actually arrive. Covers SEBI's KYC rules and how to keep your record valid, how to read a contract note line by line and check every charge from brokerage to STT and stamp duty, how T+1 settlement moves shares between the exchange, the clearing corporation, and your CDSL or NSDL demat account, and what to do when a delivery is short, a ledger looks wrong, or a broker will not respond.
Equity Basics: Shares, Dividends, Splits, and Corporate Actions
A ground-up, India-specific guide to what actually happens when you buy a share and hold it. Built for college students, first-time demat holders, salaried professionals, homemakers, and retirees who have opened a Zerodha or similar trading account but never had anyone explain what a share really represents, where it physically lives, why a dividend lands in your bank account on some random Tuesday, or why your holding suddenly shows double the shares at half the price overnight. Covers ownership and share types, NSDL and CDSL depositories, reading your demat and contract note, how dividends are declared and taxed, and how stock splits and bonus issues actually work, using real NSE and BSE examples, screener.in data, and SEBI rules throughout.
- What actually happens, legally and financially, when you buy and hold a share
- How dividends, bonus issues, and stock splits affect what you actually hold
- How to read your own demat statement and shareholding pattern like an analyst
Getting Started with Zerodha Kite: Account Setup to First Trade
A practical, no-jargon walkthrough for anyone opening their first demat and trading account with Zerodha. Covers why you need an account, KYC and documents, setting up Kite, navigating the platform, and placing and exiting your first trade, with the common beginner mistakes to avoid along the way.
- Why you need a demat and trading account, and how Zerodha fits in
- How to complete KYC and open a Zerodha account without errors
- How to link your bank account and fund your trading account
Getting Started: Demat, Trading Accounts, and Broker Infrastructure
A practical, ground-up walkthrough of the account infrastructure that sits behind every trade you place: how your demat, trading, and bank accounts actually connect, how to choose and verify a broker, and how account types, KYC, and authorizations work in practice. Built for first-time demat holders, students, salaried professionals, homemakers, and retirees who want more than a surface-level comparison before they open an account.
- How your demat, trading, and bank accounts link together to settle a trade
- What a Depository Participant does, and how CDSL and NSDL actually hold your shares
- The real difference between full-service and discount brokers, beyond the brokerage number
Groww App Walkthrough: Investing in Stocks and Mutual Funds
A practical, screen-by-screen guide to using Groww as your first stockbroker and mutual fund platform. Covers opening and verifying your account, finding your way around the app, placing your first stock trade, and starting your first SIP, so nothing on the platform feels unfamiliar.
- How to open and verify a Groww demat and trading account, including KYC
- How to navigate the Groww app and web dashboard without getting lost
- How to add funds and link your bank account correctly
Investor Psychology and Behavioral Finance Foundations
A beginner-friendly, India-specific guide to the mental traps that quietly cost retail investors money. Built for first-time demat holders, college students, salaried professionals, homemakers, and retirees, this course explains why smart, well-informed people still buy high, sell low, chase WhatsApp tips, and panic during a crash. Covers the core biases behind bad investing decisions, how they show up specifically in the Indian market (IPO frenzy, SIP discipline, Diwali bonus spending, the 2020 Covid crash), and practical, rules-based ways to protect yourself from your own brain.
- Discover why the brain struggles with investing decisions
- Recognize biases and behavioral traps in Indian markets
- Build discipline across life stages to debias decisions
Learning Dividend Investing Through ITC's History
Dividend investing is easiest to understand through a real company's real history, not abstract formulas. This course walks through ITC's decades-long dividend record, from what a dividend actually is, to why ITC's stock price stagnated for years even as its dividends kept growing, to how you can apply the same evaluation checklist to any dividend stock on the NSE or BSE.
- What a dividend is, and how it differs from a capital gain
- How to read a company's dividend history and compute yield and payout ratio
- Why a stock's price can stagnate even while its dividends keep rising
Market Cycles: Bull Markets, Bear Markets, and Corrections
A beginner-friendly, India-specific guide to how stock markets actually move over time: the recurring rhythm of bull runs, corrections, and bear markets. Built for first-time demat holders, college students, salaried professionals, homemakers, and retirees who have watched the Nifty and Sensex swing wildly and want to understand what a bull market, a correction, and a bear market actually mean, how to tell them apart, and what history (2008, 2020, and other real Indian episodes) teaches about staying invested through the cycle instead of panicking at the wrong moment. Uses real NSE and BSE index data, Indian case studies, and practical guidance for a Zerodha-era retail investor throughout.
- Define what a market cycle actually looks like
- Spot the anatomy and traps of bull markets
- Recognize bear markets and corrections as they unfold
Mastering Zerodha Console for Portfolio Tracking
A hands-on walkthrough of Zerodha Console, the reporting and portfolio-tracking dashboard that sits behind every Zerodha demat account. Written for first-time demat holders, salaried professionals, homemakers, retirees, and students who already have a Zerodha account and want to actually understand what Console is showing them, rather than just glancing at a profit or loss number. Covers reading Holdings correctly, the difference between Positions and Holdings, tracking mutual funds through Coin, how corporate actions like bonuses and splits show up in your reports, and using the Tax P&L report at return-filing time. No prior trading or accounting background assumed.
- Navigate Console's dashboard and find the report you need without hunting around
- Read Holdings correctly: invested value, current value, day change, and overall returns
- Tell Positions and Holdings apart, and know which one to check for what
Order Types and Trade Execution for Beginners
A ground-up guide to placing orders that do what you intend. Covers how exchanges match trades, the difference between market and limit orders, stop-loss mechanics, bracket and cover orders, and the validity rules that decide whether your order survives the day.
- How the exchange order book matches buyers and sellers by price-time priority
- How to read the 5-level market depth window before placing an order
- When to use a market order versus a limit order, and what each risks
Practice Drills: Building a Sample Diversified Portfolio
A practice-first course for anyone who has read about diversification but never actually built a portfolio. Working through a sample investor profile, you will run the same drills a first-time investor should run before putting real money to work: setting a risk and goal profile, splitting money across equity, debt, and gold, choosing funds and stocks without overlap, sizing positions so no single bet can hurt too much, and stress-testing the mix against a market correction. Every drill uses Indian tools and context: NSE, BSE, Nifty 50 weights, screener.in-style research, and Zerodha-style demat statements. Built for college students, first-time demat account holders, salaried professionals, homemakers, and retirees who want a repeatable checklist, not just theory.
- Define a sample investor profile by goal, time horizon, and risk appetite before allocating a single rupee
- Split a portfolio across equity, debt, and gold using a simple allocation framework
- Pick large cap, mid cap, and small cap mutual funds and check them for overlap before buying
Practice Drills: Calculating Capital Gains Tax on Sample Trades
A hands-on practice course for investors who already know the basic rules of capital gains tax and want to get fast and accurate at applying them. Each lesson works through sample trades drawn from real NSE and BSE scenarios, building from single delivery trades to netting gains and losses across a full financial year.
- How to classify a trade as short-term or long-term and apply the correct tax rate
- How to compute cost basis correctly, including STT and brokerage adjustments
- How the grandfathering clause changes the taxable gain on pre-2018 holdings
Practice Drills: Calculating P/E, P/B, and Dividend Yield
A practice-first companion to the stock market basics track. Instead of re-explaining what P/E, P/B, and dividend yield mean, this course puts you through real calculation drills using actual Indian company numbers, so you can compute and sanity-check these ratios yourself instead of just reading them off screener.in.
- Calculate trailing and forward P/E from a company's EPS
- Work out book value per share and the P/B ratio
- Calculate dividend yield and spot when a high yield is a trap
Practice Drills: Interpreting Quarterly Results Announcements
A practice-first companion to How to Read Financial Statements. Instead of more theory, this course puts real quarterly results releases from NSE-listed companies in front of you and drills you through them: revenue, profit, margins, YoY vs QoQ comparisons, and the one-off items that trip up first-time readers, until spotting what actually matters becomes automatic.
- Find a company's quarterly results release on NSE, BSE and screener.in
- Read revenue, net profit and EPS line by line on a real results release
- Tell YoY and QoQ comparisons apart and know which one matters for a given number
Practice Drills: Placing Mock Orders, Market vs Limit
A hands-on, drill-based course for anyone who has opened a demat account but never actually placed an order. Walks through the real difference between market and limit orders, how order validity types like Day, IOC, and GTT work, and a step-by-step guided walkthrough of placing both order types on Zerodha Kite. Ends with the mistakes new investors make most often and practice drills to test your judgment on which order type fits a given situation. Built for college students, first-time demat holders, salaried professionals, homemakers, and retirees who want to place their first order with confidence, not guesswork.
- The real difference between a market order and a limit order, and when each one protects you
- How order validity types like Day, IOC, and GTT change what happens to your order
- How to place a market order and a limit order step by step on a broker platform like Zerodha Kite
Practice Drills: Reading Balance Sheets Line by Line
A practice-first companion to How to Read Financial Statements. Instead of more theory, this course puts real balance sheets from NSE-listed companies in front of you and drills you line by line: current assets, fixed assets, current liabilities, borrowings and equity, until spotting what belongs where becomes automatic.
- Sort any balance sheet line into assets, liabilities or equity without hesitating
- Read current assets and current liabilities line by line on a real filing
- Tell current items apart from non-current ones on sight
Practice Drills: Reading Contract Notes and Verifying Charges
A hands-on, India-specific drill set for actually reading the contract note your broker sends you and checking whether every charge on it is correct. Built for first-time demat holders, college students, salaried professionals, homemakers, and retirees who have opened a Zerodha or Groww contract note PDF, seen a wall of numbers, and had no idea what to check. Walks through every row and charge line, brokerage, STT, exchange transaction charges, stamp duty, GST, and SEBI turnover fees, then puts that knowledge to work verifying real equity delivery, intraday, and full-day contract notes against the broker's own tariff sheet.
Practice Drills: Screening Stocks Using Basic Fundamental Filters
A practice-first course for learners who already understand basic financial statements and ratios. Instead of teaching new theory, this course drills the habit of screening: choosing the right fundamental filters, building queries on screener.in, and running guided screens against real NSE-listed stocks to separate quality names from red flags.
- Which fundamental filters (P/E, ROE, debt-to-equity, sales growth, promoter holding) actually matter and why
- How to build and combine filter queries on screener.in
- How to save, export and iterate on a screen as your criteria change
Practice Drills: Spotting Red Flags in Annual Reports
A practice-drill course for retail investors who can already read a balance sheet, P&L, and cash flow statement and want to build the sharper skill of spotting trouble in them. You will work through real Indian annual report excerpts and case-style scenarios to catch rising debtors against flat sales, related-party loans, profit that never turns into cash, and auditor notes that quietly say more than they seem to. Built for first-time demat holders, salaried professionals, homemakers, and retirees who want a repeatable checklist, not just theory.
- Spot revenue quality problems like rising debtors against flat or falling sales
- Recognize related-party transactions and promoter loans that should worry you
- Tell the difference between accounting profit and real cash profit
Reading Company Fundamentals on Screener.in
Screener.in puts a decade of any listed Indian company's financials in front of you for free, but a blank screen full of numbers is only useful once you know what you're looking at. This course walks you through the platform itself, then through the Profit & Loss, Balance Sheet and Cash Flow pages, and finally through the ratios Screener calculates automatically, so you can open any company page on the NSE or BSE and form your own view in minutes.
- Navigate a Screener.in company page and know where every number comes from
- Read the Profit & Loss, Balance Sheet and Cash Flow statements without a finance degree
- Tell standalone numbers apart from consolidated ones and know which to trust for a given question
Reading Reliance Industries' Annual Report: A Beginner's Walkthrough
Most first-time investors never open the annual report of a company they own. This course fixes that using Reliance Industries, India's largest listed company, as the worked example. You will learn to read the Chairman's statement, understand RIL's four businesses, and walk through its actual balance sheet and profit and loss statement line by line, so you can do the same for any company you hold.
- Why the annual report matters more than the quarterly result or the share price
- How to find and navigate a company's annual report on its website and on NSE/BSE
- How to read a Chairman's statement and MD&A without getting lost in jargon
Risk, Return, and Portfolio Construction Basics
A ground-up, India-specific guide to the two ideas every investing decision actually rests on: risk and return. Built for college students, first-time demat holders, salaried professionals, homemakers, and retirees who can quote a stock's return but have never been taught what risk really means, why a 15% FD-beating return can still be a bad outcome, or why one hot stock tip is not a portfolio. Covers the real difference between risk and volatility, the main types of investment risk, CAGR versus absolute returns, real versus nominal returns after inflation, post-tax returns under India's current STCG and LTCG rules, and the basics of asset allocation and diversification, using real NSE and BSE examples, screener.in data, Zerodha statements, and SEBI-relevant rules throughout.
- Learn what risk actually means when investing
- Understand return properly, beyond just the headline number
- Build your first diversified portfolio with confidence
Setting Up and Using a Personal Portfolio Tracker in Excel
A practical, step by step course on building your own portfolio tracker in Excel or Google Sheets. You will learn to log every transaction correctly, pull live prices, calculate true annualized returns with XIRR, track dividends and corporate actions, and keep a tracker that survives tax season instead of falling apart by March.
- Set up a Holdings, Transactions, and Dashboard sheet structure that scales as your portfolio grows
- Log buy and sell transactions so average price and realized gains are always correct
- Pull live prices into your sheet with GOOGLEFINANCE or Excel Stock Data Types
Understanding Bonus Shares Through the Case of Infosys
Bonus shares are one of the most misunderstood corporate actions on the Indian market. Using Infosys, one of NSE's most bonus-active large caps, as a running example, this course walks through what a bonus issue is, what it does and does not do to your wealth, and how to read one like an analyst instead of just cheering the headline.
- What a bonus share issue is and why companies choose to do it
- How bonus ratios, record dates, and ex-dates change what you hold and what it's worth
- Infosys's full bonus history and what each issue meant for a long-term holder
Understanding CDSL Easi and NSDL Speed-e for Demat Statements
Your broker's app is not your demat account. CDSL and NSDL, India's two depositories, hold the real record of what you own, and every investor should know how to log in directly, read a Consolidated Account Statement, and spot a discrepancy before it becomes a problem. This course walks you through registering on CDSL Easi and NSDL Speed-e, reading your holdings and CAS, and protecting your demat login from fraud.
- Why your demat account sits with a depository, not your broker, and what that means for you
- The practical differences between CDSL and NSDL and how to tell which one holds your holdings
- How to register for and navigate CDSL Easi and Easiest
Understanding NSE and BSE Websites for Company Filings and Announcements
A practical, hands-on guide to the two places every piece of official company information actually lives: the NSE and BSE websites. Learn why companies are legally required to disclose results, corporate actions and material events on the exchanges before anywhere else, and how to find that information yourself instead of relying on news headlines or social media screenshots. Walk through the real layout of nseindia.com and bseindia.com, use their corporate announcements and company search tools, pull up a company's full filing history, and read dividend, bonus, split and buyback notices directly from the source. Built for first-time demat account holders, salaried professionals and retirees who want to check facts themselves before acting on a stock.
Understanding Stock Exchange Listing Norms and IPO Process
A ground-up guide to how companies list on the NSE and BSE and how the IPO process actually works in India. Covers SEBI's listing eligibility norms under the ICDR Regulations, the role of merchant bankers and registrars, how to read a DRHP and RHP, book building versus fixed price issues, investor categories (QIB, NII, retail), and the practical mechanics of applying via ASBA and UPI. Ends with how to read a prospectus for red flags before you invest. Built for first-time demat holders and retail investors who want to understand an IPO beyond the subscription number on financial news.
- Why and how a company lists on the NSE and BSE
- SEBI's eligibility norms for an IPO under the ICDR Regulations
- How to read a DRHP and RHP without being a lawyer
Understanding Stock Splits Through the Case of MRF vs Divis Labs
A short case-study course on stock splits, built around two contrasting real examples: MRF, which has never split its shares and trades above ₹1 lakh, and Divis Labs, which has. You'll learn what a split mechanically does and doesn't do to a company's value, why companies choose to split (or not), and how to read a split announcement without assuming it means anything about the business.
- What actually happens to your shares, price, and holding value in a stock split
- Why a stock split does not change a company's market capitalization or your investment's worth
- Why MRF has never split its stock despite trading above ₹1 lakh per share
Upstox Platform Guide for New Investors
A practical, screen-by-screen guide to using Upstox as your first stockbroker. Covers opening and verifying your account, finding your way around the app and web platform, placing your first trade, and reading your holdings, contract notes, and funds so nothing on the platform feels unfamiliar.
- How to open and verify a Upstox demat and trading account, including KYC
- How to navigate the Upstox app and web platform without getting lost
- How to add funds and read your trading balance correctly
Using Google Finance and Yahoo Finance for Market Data
A practical, tool-first course for anyone who wants Indian market data on their own screen, not just on a broker app. Built for college students, first-time demat holders, salaried professionals, homemakers, and retirees who want to track prices, build a simple watchlist, and pull a company's numbers without paying for a data terminal. Covers reading and pulling live NSE and BSE quotes on Google Finance, using the GOOGLEFINANCE function in Google Sheets to build a live watchlist and portfolio tracker, and navigating Yahoo Finance for historical price downloads and company financials, using real Indian tickers throughout.
- How to read a live stock quote correctly on Google Finance, including NSE versus BSE pricing differences
- How to use the GOOGLEFINANCE function to pull live and historical prices into Google Sheets
- How to build your own watchlist and portfolio tracker in a spreadsheet you control
Using Income Tax Portal for Capital Gains Reporting Basics
A practical, step-by-step walkthrough of reporting capital gains from stocks and mutual funds on India's income tax e-filing portal, from reading your broker's capital gains statement to filing Schedule CG correctly.
- How to read your broker's capital gains statement and separate short-term from long-term gains
- How to reconcile your capital gains data against your AIS and Form 26AS before filing
- How to choose between ITR-2 and ITR-3 based on your income sources
Using the SEBI SCORES Portal for Investor Grievances
A practical, step-by-step walkthrough of SCORES (SEBI Complaints Redress System), the official portal for filing grievances against brokers, listed companies, mutual funds, RTAs, and other SEBI-regulated intermediaries. Covers what counts as a valid grievance, how to register and file a complaint with the right evidence and category, how to track it through resolution, and what to do when a complaint goes unresolved, including escalation to the SEBI Ombudsman and the ODR portal. Written for first-time demat account holders, salaried professionals, homemakers, and retirees who may never have filed a regulatory complaint before.
- What SCORES is, who it covers, and what kinds of complaints it can and cannot resolve
- How to register on SCORES and file a complaint with the correct category and evidence
- How to track your complaint status and understand SEBI's resolution timelines
Stock Market from Zero
A ground-up guide to the Indian stock market for complete beginners, covering what the market actually is, how to open a demat and trading account, and how buying and selling really works. Explains how the Sensex and Nifty indices work and gives first-time investors a simple framework for making their first investment.
- Learn what the stock market is and why it exists
- Open a demat and trading account step by step
- See how buying, selling, Sensex and Nifty actually work
Technical Trading
4 courses
Introduction to Technical Analysis (Extended)
A ground-up, India-specific guide to reading stock charts, built for people who are not trying to become day traders. Written for first-time demat holders, college students, salaried professionals, homemakers and retirees who keep seeing candlestick charts on Zerodha Kite and Groww, hear phrases like '52-week high' and 'broke its 200 DMA' on business news, and want to actually understand what they mean. Unlike a trader's course, this one teaches charts from an investor's lens: what they tell you about a stock or the market, how long-term investors and momentum investors use them differently, and where charts fit alongside fundamentals rather than replacing them. Loaded with real Indian case studies across Infosys, HDFC Bank, IRCTC, Waaree Energies, Suzlon, Zomato, Yes Bank, Titan and Eicher Motors, plus Nifty 50, Nifty Bank and Nifty IT index history, so every concept is anchored to a real Indian market story instead of a textbook example.
- How to read a price chart on Zerodha Kite, Groww or TradingView without needing a trading background
- What financial news actually means by '52-week high', 'all-time high' and 'broke its 200 DMA'
- How long-term investors use charts differently from intraday and swing traders
Practice Drills: Identifying Support and Resistance on Live Charts
A hands-on companion to Technical Analysis: Charts, Patterns and Indicators. Instead of more theory, this course puts you in front of real Indian market charts and has you practice spotting support and resistance the way a trader actually does, one drill at a time.
- Spot horizontal support and resistance on live Nifty and Bank Nifty charts
- Tell a strong level from a weak one using touches, volume, and recency
- Draw and trade off dynamic trendline support and resistance
Practice Drills: Reading and Interpreting Candlestick Patterns
A hands-on drill course for practicing candlestick pattern recognition on real Indian market charts. Skip the theory recap and go straight to spotting, naming, and interpreting single-candle and multi-candle patterns the way you will actually see them on a Zerodha or screener.in chart.
- Identify single-candle patterns like Doji, Hammer, and Shooting Star on real NSE and BSE charts
- Distinguish high-conviction candles from indecision using Marubozu and Spinning Top drills
- Read multi-candle reversal signals: Engulfing patterns, Morning Star, and Evening Star
TradingView for Beginners: Charts, Indicators, and Alerts
A hands-on guide to TradingView built around NSE and BSE charts. Covers setting up your watchlist for Indian symbols, reading candlestick and other chart types across timeframes, using core indicators like moving averages, RSI, and volume, and setting up alerts so you can follow the market without staring at a screen all day.
- Why TradingView is widely used by Indian retail investors and how to set it up for NSE/BSE symbols
- How to build and organize a watchlist using correct exchange suffixes
- How to navigate the TradingView chart interface
Mutual Funds & ETFs
5 courses
Mutual Funds and Passive Investing Basics (Extended)
Description coming soon.
Navigating AMFI and Mutual Fund Utility Portals
Mutual fund paperwork does not end after your first SIP. This course walks you through the infrastructure behind every mutual fund investment in India, AMFI, the RTAs (CAMS and KFintech), and the MF Utility platform, so you can register once, read your Consolidated Account Statement without confusion, and handle SIPs, switches, and redemptions yourself.
- What AMFI, CAMS, and KFintech actually do, and why every mutual fund investor deals with them whether they realise it or not
- How to complete KYC through a KRA and why it only needs to be done once
- How to register on MF Utility, get a CAN, and link your folios
Practice Drills: Comparing Two Mutual Fund Factsheets
A hands-on, India-specific drill set for actually reading a mutual fund factsheet and comparing two funds side by side instead of just going by star ratings. Built for first-time demat holders, college students, salaried professionals, homemakers, and retirees who have opened an AMC factsheet PDF or a screener.in mutual fund page and not known which numbers actually matter. Walks through expense ratio, exit load, fund manager tenure, portfolio turnover, trailing versus rolling returns, and the risk metrics worth trusting, then puts that knowledge to work on real head-to-head comparisons: two large cap funds, a direct versus regular plan of the same fund, and an active fund against its index fund benchmark.
Using Value Research Online for Mutual Fund Analysis
Value Research Online is the tool most serious Indian mutual fund investors check before they buy. This course teaches you to actually use it: read its star ratings correctly, pull the metrics that matter, compare funds side by side, and build a shortlist you can defend, instead of picking funds off a screener's top-10 list.
- Navigate Value Research Online and set up a free account
- Read and correctly interpret VRO's 1-5 star fund rating system
- Understand NAV, AUM, and expense ratio as shown on VRO
Mutual Funds & ETFs — The Complete Guide
A complete guide to how mutual funds and ETFs actually work, covering how to evaluate a fund, compare index funds and ETFs, and use SIPs and SWPs effectively. Walks through the tax rules on mutual funds and shows how to build a mutual fund portfolio suited to your goals.
- Learn how mutual funds actually work and get evaluated
- Compare index funds and ETFs as portfolio building blocks
- Use SIPs, SWPs and tax rules to build your portfolio
Financial Modelling
1 course
Building Your First Financial Model in Excel
Financial modelling is one of the most in-demand skills for finance freshers, but most people learn it by copying templates without understanding why they work. This course starts from zero: what a model actually is, the Excel habits that separate a clean model from a broken one, and how the three financial statements fit together. By the end, you will have the foundation to build and audit your own models with confidence.
- What a financial model is actually used for in real finance roles
- Modelling conventions: colour coding, structure and auditability
- The Excel functions and habits every modeller relies on
Quantitative Finance
22 courses
Understanding the Mathematical Toolkit for Quant Finance: What You Actually Need
A finance-first orientation to the mathematics behind quantitative investing, written for engineers, coders, and systematic traders who want to know which tools matter before committing months to textbooks. Instead of teaching every subject in depth, this course shows where probability, statistics, linear algebra, calculus, time series, optimisation, and numerical methods actually appear in real quant work: sizing a Nifty 50 position, building a covariance matrix from NSE returns, backtesting a momentum rule, pricing a Bank Nifty option, and reading a risk report. Each lesson pairs the concept with a worked Indian example and a clear verdict on how deep you need to go. You finish with a personal study plan and a checklist of the maths you can defer until a specific strategy demands it.
- Which branches of mathematics quant roles actually use daily, and which are mostly interview theatre
- How to think in probabilities and expected value when sizing a position on the NSE
- Why the covariance matrix, not individual stock volatility, decides the risk of a portfolio
Case Study: Analyzing the 2020 Covid Crash Through a Volatility Lens
A beginner-friendly quant case study that re-reads the March 2020 Covid crash using volatility as the measuring instrument instead of price. You will learn what realized and implied volatility actually measure, how NSE computes India VIX, and then apply those tools to the actual 2020 timeline: the calm January, the 38% collapse in Nifty, VIX at 86, two circuit-breaker halts, and the V-shaped recovery. The final chapter shows how to reproduce every chart in Python and turn the lessons into a simple volatility-aware position-sizing rule.
- What volatility measures, how it is calculated from daily returns, and why it is the quant's preferred lens for a crash
- How NSE builds India VIX from the Nifty options chain and what a reading of 12 versus 86 actually implies
- The day-by-day volatility story of January to June 2020 on NSE, including the 13 March and 23 March circuit-breaker halts
Case Study: Comparing Buy and Hold vs a Simple Systematic Strategy
A hands-on case study for coders, engineers and quant-curious investors who want to know whether a simple rule can actually beat doing nothing. You will take two clearly defined approaches, buying and holding the Nifty 50 through an index fund, and a 200-day moving average rule that moves between the Nifty 50 and a liquid fund, and put them through the same test on the same Indian data. Along the way you will learn why the Total Return Index matters, how to build both equity curves in Python, how to read CAGR, drawdown, Sharpe and time under water without fooling yourself, and how brokerage, STT, exit loads, capital gains tax and whipsaws change the verdict. The course ends with an honest scorecard and a framework you can reuse to judge any strategy against buy and hold.
- What buy and hold actually commits you to, and why most investors who claim to follow it do not
- What separates a systematic strategy from a hunch: a written rule, a signal, a schedule and no discretion
- How to set up a fair comparison with the same data, the same period, the same starting capital and no cherry-picking
Case Study: How Renaissance Technologies' Philosophy Applies to Retail Quant
A case study breaking down Renaissance Technologies and the Medallion Fund: what actually made the firm different, which of its principles are genuinely learnable by a retail trader, and where the comparison breaks down. Written for engineers, coders, and systematic traders who want the substance behind the legend, not the mythology.
- What Renaissance Technologies and the Medallion Fund actually did, separated from the popular mythology around them
- Which of Renaissance's principles (uncorrelated small edges, data discipline, systematic risk control) are genuinely usable by a retail trader
- Why capital, infrastructure and data access mean you cannot replicate Medallion from a retail brokerage account
Case Study: Understanding Flash Crashes Through Market Microstructure
A case-study driven walk through market microstructure: how order books, market makers and liquidity actually work, what happened minute by minute during the May 2010 Flash Crash and India's own fat-finger and circuit-breaker moments, and how NSE/BSE safeguards and SEBI's algo trading rules try to prevent a repeat. Built for engineers, coders and systematic traders who want the mechanics, not just the headlines.
- How order books, bid-ask spreads and market makers actually work
- What triggered the May 2010 Flash Crash, minute by minute
- How liquidity evaporation creates a feedback loop that crashes prices
Introduction to Quantitative Finance: What Quants Actually Do
A practical, myth-busting guide to what quantitative finance actually involves, where quants work in India and globally, what the job looks like day to day, the core skills that matter, and how to actually break in.
- Explore the quant landscape and where quants actually work
- See a day in the life and the quant toolkit
- Learn practical paths for getting into quantitative finance
Introduction to Risk Metrics: Sharpe Ratio, Sortino Ratio, Drawdown
A clear, formula-first walkthrough of the three risk metrics every serious investor and systematic trader needs: the Sharpe ratio, the Sortino ratio, and maximum drawdown. Learn what each one actually measures, how to calculate it on real Indian market data, where each one breaks down, and how to read them together instead of in isolation.
- Learn why risk-adjusted returns matter more than raw returns
- Calculate and interpret the Sharpe and Sortino ratios
- Understand drawdown and recovery to judge portfolio risk
Introduction to SQL for Storing and Querying Market Data
A first course in SQL built entirely around Indian market data, for engineering graduates, working coders and traders who want to store and query price history properly instead of wrestling with spreadsheets. Sets up a free local database with SQLite and DB Browser, then teaches SELECT, WHERE, sorting, aggregation and GROUP BY by working directly with NSE and BSE bhavcopy data. Moves on to real schema design, primary keys, and joins across stocks, prices and sector tables, finishing with subqueries and CTEs for the kind of multi-step questions a quant or systematic trader actually asks of their data.
Introduction to Systematic Trading vs Discretionary Trading
A clear, jargon-free comparison of the two ways to trade markets: by written rules that are tested and executed the same way every time, or by human judgement applied trade by trade. Built for engineering graduates and coders curious about quant work, and for active traders who want to know whether their process should be systematized. Covers what each style actually is, how a systematic rule is written and backtested, what human discretion does well and badly, how to compare the two honestly on returns, risk, costs and scalability in Indian markets, and how to pick the path that fits your temperament, time and capital. Uses NSE and BSE examples throughout, with real Indian tools and cost structures.
- What separates a systematic trader from a discretionary one, and why 'algorithmic' and 'systematic' are not the same thing
- How a trading idea becomes a written rule with a universe, signal, entry, exit and position size, and how that rule is backtested
- What backtests can and cannot tell you, and the ways both styles fool themselves: overfitting on one side, hindsight bias on the other
Introduction to Time Series Data in Financial Markets
A ground-up introduction to time series data for engineering graduates, coders, and traders who want to systematize their process. Starts with what makes market data a time series, how an OHLCV bar is built, and where Indian market data actually comes from (NSE bhavcopy, broker APIs, free sources). Moves to the one transformation every quant does first, prices to returns, including log returns, adjusted prices, and Indian corporate actions. Then teaches how to describe a series honestly: rolling windows, volatility, return distributions, stationarity, autocorrelation, seasonality, and the cleaning work that real NSE data demands. Every concept is applied to Nifty 50 and NSE stock data with short Python examples.
- Explain what makes financial data a time series and why ordering and sampling frequency change what you can conclude from it
- Read an OHLCV bar, pick the right frequency for a question, and source Indian market data from NSE, BSE, and broker APIs
- Convert prices to simple and log returns, handle dividends, splits, and bonus issues, and rebuild a price path from returns
Practice Drills: Applying Derivatives to Calculate Greeks and Duration
A drill-focused course for learners who already understand options and bonds and now want to compute their risk sensitivities cleanly and quickly. Every drill uses real Indian market inputs: NSE option chains for the Greeks, G-Secs for duration and convexity. The closing chapter rebuilds the same calculations in Python for anyone who wants to automate them.
- Read Delta and Gamma off a live NSE option chain and size a hedge from them
- Quantify Theta decay and Vega sensitivity for a given options position
- Use Rho to judge how rate moves reprice an options position
Practice Drills: Building a Covariance Matrix and Running PCA on a Stock Portfolio
A practice-drill course for engineers, coders, and systematic traders who want to build real quant intuition. You will take a small portfolio of Indian stocks from raw daily returns to a full covariance matrix, then run principal component analysis on it to uncover the hidden risk factors driving the portfolio, all worked by hand first and then automated in Python.
- Why portfolio risk cannot be measured by averaging individual stock volatilities
- How to compute a covariance matrix from real NSE stock return data, by hand and in Python
- What eigenvectors and eigenvalues of a covariance matrix actually represent
Practice Drills: Building a Simple Correlation Matrix Across Stocks
A focused practice-drill course that takes you from raw NSE price data to a finished correlation matrix you can actually read and use. You will calculate correlation by hand for one pair of stocks, then build the full matrix in a spreadsheet and in Python, and learn what the numbers do and don't tell you about diversification.
- What a correlation coefficient actually measures between two stocks
- Why correlation must be calculated on returns, not raw prices
- How to pull clean historical price data for NSE stocks
Practice Drills: Calculating Sharpe Ratio and Drawdown by Hand and in Python
A focused set of practice drills for two of the most-used risk metrics in systematic trading: Sharpe ratio and maximum drawdown. Each metric is worked out by hand first, from raw daily returns, so the formula stops being a black box. Then the same calculation is reproduced in Python using numpy and pandas, so you can check your hand-worked answer against code and start building the habit of verifying a metric both ways.
- What Sharpe ratio and maximum drawdown actually measure, and why raw returns alone are misleading
- How to calculate Sharpe ratio by hand from a series of daily returns, including annualizing it correctly
- How to reproduce the same Sharpe ratio calculation in Python using numpy and pandas
Practice Drills: Identifying Overfitting in a Sample Backtest
A practice-drill course for anyone building or evaluating trading strategies who wants to catch overfitting before it costs real money. You will look at sample backtests, learn the warning signs of curve-fitting and data snooping, and work through drills that test whether a strategy's edge is real or an artifact of the data it was built on.
- Recognize the signs that a backtest result is too good to be true
- Tell the difference between curve-fitting, data snooping, and survivorship bias
- Read the gap between in-sample and out-of-sample performance
Understanding Calculus for Finance: Derivatives, Integrals, and Continuous Compounding
A ground-up, finance-first introduction to the calculus that quant work actually uses. Starts with the idea of a rate of change using Nifty 50 price paths, builds derivatives as sensitivities (duration, delta, marginal cost), then integrals as accumulation (total return, expected payoff, area under a distribution), and finishes with the exponential function and continuous compounding that underpin discounting, log returns, and Black-Scholes. Every concept is anchored in NSE and BSE data, INR examples, and screener.in style numbers rather than abstract textbook problems.
Understanding Correlation and Its Role in Strategy Building
A ground-up, numbers-first course on correlation for anyone who wants to build trading or investing strategies systematically. You will learn what the correlation coefficient actually measures, how to compute it correctly on NSE price data in Google Sheets and Python, why it moves around so much across market regimes, and how it drives the three things every strategy depends on: diversification, hedging, and relative-value ideas like pairs trading. Anchored in Indian examples throughout, including Nifty 50, Bank Nifty, IT stocks versus USD/INR, gold, crude, and the 2020 COVID crash, with a hard look at the traps that catch most beginners: spurious correlations, unstable windows, and mistaking correlation for causation or beta.
- Read a correlation coefficient the way a quant does, and explain what it does and does not tell you
- Compute correlation correctly from NSE data using returns rather than prices, in Sheets and Python
- Tell correlation apart from beta, R-squared, and causation without getting confused again
Understanding Linear Algebra for Finance: Matrices, Eigenvalues, and Covariance
A from-scratch, finance-first tour of linear algebra for engineers, coders, and systematic traders who want to understand what actually happens inside a portfolio optimiser or a risk model. You will represent portfolios as vectors, build a covariance matrix from real Nifty 50 constituent returns, see why portfolio variance is w transpose sigma w, and meet eigenvalues through principal component analysis of Indian equities and the G-Sec yield curve. The final chapter applies it all: beta via the normal equations, the minimum variance portfolio via the inverse covariance matrix, and the estimation errors that break naive models on real NSE data. Every concept is anchored in Indian market examples with worked numbers you can reproduce in Python or Google Sheets.
- Represent a portfolio of NSE stocks as a weight vector and price moves as a returns matrix
- Multiply, transpose, and invert matrices by hand and in Python, and know which operation answers which finance question
- Build a covariance and correlation matrix from daily returns of Nifty 50 constituents
Understanding Market Data: Tick, OHLC, and Order Book Basics
Every quant model, backtest and trading bot is built on market data, yet most people never learn what that data actually is. This course takes you from a single order hitting NSE's matching engine to the tick it produces, the OHLC candle it gets folded into, and the order book it moved through. You will learn to read Zerodha's market depth window, understand why adjusted and unadjusted prices differ, spot the data quality traps that quietly break backtests, and pull your first clean dataset into Python. Built for engineers, data scientists and systematic traders who want to stop treating price data as a black box.
- Trace a single order through NSE's matching engine and understand what a tick, a trade and a quote each record
- Build OHLC candles from raw ticks and see how timeframe and aggregation choices change what a chart shows
- Correct historical prices for splits, bonuses and dividends and know when to use adjusted versus unadjusted data
Understanding Probability Concepts Used in Trading Strategies
A ground-up course on the probability ideas that every systematic trading strategy quietly depends on. Built for engineering graduates, coders and self-taught traders who can write a loop but have never had probability explained in market terms. Covers expected value and edge, distributions and fat tails, conditional probability and base rates, sample size and the law of large numbers, and how these feed into position sizing, drawdown estimates and the honest evaluation of a backtest. Every idea is worked with Indian market examples: Nifty 50 daily returns, Bank Nifty options, Zerodha brokerage arithmetic and SEBI's own data on retail F&O outcomes.
Using Excel Solver for Basic Optimization Problems
A hands-on introduction to Excel's Solver add-in for readers who want to move beyond manual trial and error. You will set up an objective, decision variables and constraints for a real portfolio allocation problem, run Solver end to end, and learn to read its sensitivity report so you can trust the answer it gives you.
- What optimization means and when Solver is the right tool for the job
- How to enable Solver and structure a spreadsheet around an objective, decision variables and constraints
- How to build and solve a portfolio allocation problem in Excel from scratch
Using Google Colab for Free Cloud Based Quant Research
A hands on introduction to Google Colab as a free, cloud based research environment for quant work. You will set up your first notebook, pull real NSE and BSE market data, and build a repeatable analysis workflow, all without installing anything on your own machine.
- Why cloud notebooks are a better starting point than a local Python setup for market data work
- How to set up and navigate a Colab notebook, including runtimes and Google Drive integration
- How to pull, clean, and store NSE and BSE price data using yfinance and nsepy
Algorithmic Trading
11 courses
Case Study: A Retail Trader's Journey From Discretionary to Systematic Trading
A foundation-level case study built around Arjun Mehta, a Bengaluru software engineer who starts trading Nifty stocks and Bank Nifty on Zerodha on instinct, loses money, and rebuilds himself as a systematic trader over eighteen months. Each chapter is one stage of his journey: auditing his discretionary trades with Zerodha Console, turning instincts into precise written rules, backtesting on NSE data with realistic Indian costs, sizing positions and surviving a real drawdown, and finally going live with Kite Connect while keeping the discipline that stops him slipping back. Built for engineers, coders and traders who want to see exactly how the transition happens in an Indian account, with the mistakes left in.
- Audit your own discretionary trades using Zerodha Console, Tradebook and P&L exports to find where money actually leaks
- Convert instincts into a complete, testable rule set covering universe, entry, exit, sizing and review
- Run a first Python backtest on NSE data with Indian brokerage, STT, slippage and taxes built in
Case Study: Backtesting a Basic Momentum Strategy on Indian Stocks
A hands-on, end-to-end case study for coders and quant-curious engineers who have never run a backtest before. You will take one clearly specified idea, buying the NSE stocks that have risen the most over the past year and rebalancing monthly, and turn it into a working Python backtest step by step. Along the way you will source and clean Indian price data, handle splits and bonuses, avoid survivorship and look-ahead bias, build the ranking and rebalancing engine, and then subtract the brokerage, STT, impact cost and capital gains tax that separate a pretty equity curve from a real one. The course ends with a verdict on whether basic momentum has actually worked in India, and a checklist for what to test before risking a rupee.
- What cross-sectional momentum is, why it has persisted in Indian and global markets, and what the Nifty200 Momentum 30 index tells you about it
- How to write a complete, testable strategy specification before touching any data, so you cannot move the goalposts later
- How to source NSE price data in Python, adjust it for splits, bonuses and dividends, and build a clean monthly price panel
Case Study: How a Simple Moving Average Crossover Strategy Performs on Nifty
A hands-on case study for coders and quant-curious engineers who want to run their first real backtest. You will take the most famous trend-following rule in the world, buy Nifty 50 when its 50-day moving average crosses above its 200-day average and sell when it crosses back below, and test it honestly on two decades of Indian index data in Python. Along the way you will download and clean Nifty 50 history, compute moving averages and crossover signals in pandas, build positions without look-ahead bias, simulate an equity curve, and then subtract the brokerage, STT, slippage and capital gains tax that separate a textbook chart from a real trading account. The course ends with a verdict on whether the golden cross has actually worked on Nifty, why it behaves the way it does in Indian bull and sideways markets, and a checklist of what to test before risking a rupee.
- What a simple moving average is, what a golden cross and death cross mean, and why trend followers have used them for a century
- How to write the exact rules of a crossover strategy before touching any data, so you cannot move the goalposts later
- How to download Nifty 50 daily history in Python and clean it into a backtest-ready pandas DataFrame
Introduction to TradingView Pine Script for Strategy Building
A ground-up, code-first introduction to Pine Script for traders and engineers who want to build their own indicators and strategies on TradingView instead of relying on someone else's. You will set up TradingView for NSE and BSE charts, learn Pine Script's syntax, series and built-in variables, and use them to build real indicators like moving averages, RSI and Bollinger Bands from scratch. You will then move from indicator() to strategy(), write entry and exit logic, size positions, and read a Strategy Tester report the way a sceptical coder would, spotting the difference between a good backtest and a lucky one. No prior Pine Script experience is assumed, but comfort with basic programming logic (variables, if-else, loops) will help you move faster.
- How to set up TradingView for NSE and BSE charts and navigate the Pine Script editor
- Pine Script's core language: variables, series, built-in OHLCV variables, operators, conditionals and loops
- How to write built-in and user-defined functions in Pine Script
Introduction to Zerodha's Kite Connect API
A hands-on foundation course for using Zerodha's Kite Connect API to access market data and place orders programmatically. You will set up API access, understand the authentication flow, pull the instruments dump, fetch historical and live tick data, and place your first order, all with real NSE and BSE examples in Python.
- How to create a Kite Connect developer app and generate API credentials
- The Kite Connect login and authentication flow, including daily access token refresh
- How to fetch and decode the instruments dump to map trading symbols to instrument tokens
Practice Drills: Backtesting a Moving Average Crossover Strategy
A hands-on practice drill for building and honestly evaluating a moving average crossover backtest in Python, using real NSE price data. You will code the strategy, compute performance metrics, and learn where backtests quietly lie to you.
- How a moving average crossover strategy generates buy and sell signals
- How to source and clean NSE price data for a backtest
- How to code a crossover backtest in Python from scratch
Practice Drills: Writing a Basic Buy Sell Signal Generator in Python
A practice-drill course for coders and quant-curious learners who want to get their hands dirty writing the Python logic behind a basic buy/sell signal generator. You will pull real NSE stock data, code moving average and RSI based signals from scratch, combine them, and sanity-check the output against history. This is a coding skill drill, not a validated trading system.
- Pull historical OHLC data for NSE stocks into Python with pandas
- Code a moving average crossover signal from scratch
- Code an RSI-based overbought/oversold signal from scratch
Understanding Algorithmic Trading: Concepts and Terminology
A foundation-level walkthrough of algorithmic trading for the Indian markets, covering the core concepts, terminology, and building blocks that separate systematic trading from discretionary trading. Built for engineering graduates, coders, and traders curious about the quant side of NSE and BSE markets.
- Learn what algorithmic trading is and its core terms
- Explore types of algo strategies and backtesting basics
- See India's market infrastructure and algo career pathways
Understanding Backtesting: Concepts and Common Pitfalls
A concept-first course on backtesting for coders, engineers and systematic traders who want to know what a backtest can and cannot tell them before they write one. You will learn the anatomy of a proper backtest, how Indian price data misleads you through splits, bonuses and delisted stocks, and the five biases that turn random noise into a beautiful equity curve. You will then price the real frictions of trading on NSE and BSE, brokerage, STT, slippage, impact cost, circuit limits and capital gains tax, and learn to read CAGR, drawdown and Sharpe ratio the way a sceptical reviewer would. No code is required; every idea is illustrated with Indian stocks, Nifty data and worked numbers you can reproduce in a spreadsheet.
- What a backtest actually measures, and the difference between a historical simulation and a forecast
- The five components every backtest needs: universe, signal, rules, execution assumptions and evaluation metrics
- Why raw NSE prices lie without split, bonus and dividend adjustment, and how to spot an unadjusted series
Understanding Overfitting and Curve Fitting in Strategy Design
A foundation course on the single most common way systematic traders lose money: building a strategy that fits the past perfectly and the future not at all. You will learn what overfitting and curve fitting actually are in statistical terms, the specific design habits that let them creep in (parameter sweeps, data snooping, look-ahead and survivorship bias), how to detect an overfit strategy before you risk capital using out-of-sample tests, walk-forward analysis, and parameter sensitivity checks, and how to design strategies with an economic rationale that hold up on NSE and BSE data. Every example uses Indian market data, Indian brokers, and INR.
- Explain overfitting and curve fitting in plain statistical terms and recognise them in a backtest
- Identify the design habits that introduce overfitting: parameter sweeps, data snooping, look-ahead and survivorship bias
- Split data into in-sample and out-of-sample sets and run a walk-forward test correctly
Using Amibroker for Basic Strategy Backtesting
Learn to use Amibroker, one of the most widely used backtesting platforms among Indian systematic traders, to turn a trading idea into a rule-based strategy and test it against historical NSE data. You will set up Amibroker with Indian market data, learn the basics of AFL (Amibroker Formula Language), build a simple moving average crossover strategy, and run your first backtest with stop-loss and position sizing rules in place. By the end, you will be able to read a backtest report and spot the most common mistakes that make backtests lie.
- Install Amibroker and connect it to Indian (NSE) market data
- Read and write basic AFL (Amibroker Formula Language) code
- Translate a trading idea into buy and sell signal conditions
Python for Finance
8 courses
Introduction to Jupyter Notebooks for Trading Research
A focused course on working well inside Jupyter, for readers who already know basic Python and pandas from Introduction to Python for Finance. Covers choosing between JupyterLab, classic Notebook and VS Code notebooks, magic commands and widgets that speed up exploration, and the habits that keep a research notebook honest: avoiding hidden state, structuring notebooks so they survive a restart-and-run-all, version controlling them with Git, and exporting them into reports colleagues can actually trust. Closes with look-ahead bias and data snooping, the two mistakes that quietly ruin notebook-based research.
- Choose and configure the right Jupyter environment for serious research work
- Use magic commands, widgets and extensions to move faster inside a notebook
- Structure notebooks so they survive a restart-and-run-all
Introduction to Pandas and NumPy for Market Data
A hands-on introduction to NumPy and Pandas built around real Indian market data. You will learn to work with arrays and DataFrames, clean and index price data, pull live data from NSE and BSE, and run the same groupby and aggregation techniques used in professional quant workflows, all using screener.in exports and yfinance pulls instead of toy datasets.
- Why NumPy arrays outperform plain Python lists for price and returns data
- How to build, index, and filter Pandas Series and DataFrames
- How to work with dates and resample daily price data to weekly or monthly
Introduction to Python for Finance: Why It's the Quant's Language
A first course in Python built entirely around Indian market data, for engineering graduates, working coders and traders who want to systematise what they do. Explains why Python beat Excel, R and C++ as the working language of quant desks, sets up a proper workstation with Jupyter and free NSE data, then teaches core Python, NumPy and pandas by computing returns, moving averages, volatility and drawdowns on Nifty 50 stocks. Ends with a simple, honest backtest that includes STT and slippage, a look at Zerodha Kite Connect and SEBI's algo rules, and a realistic map of quant careers in India.
Practice Drills: Cleaning and Structuring Raw Market Data in Pandas
Nine hands-on drills for cleaning, structuring and merging real NSE and BSE market data in Pandas. Built for anyone who already knows basic Python and wants practice on the messy CSVs, corporate action adjustments and multi-symbol datasets they will actually run into, not toy data.
- Parse and clean raw NSE/BSE bhavcopy files and broker data exports in Pandas
- Adjust historical prices for splits, bonuses and dividends
- Reshape and merge multi-symbol datasets into an analysis-ready format
Practice Drills: Writing Your First Python Script to Pull Stock Data
A practice-drill course for engineers and quant-curious learners who want hands-on reps writing Python that talks to real market data. You will set up your environment, pull live NSE stock prices, clean and structure the data, save it properly, and then push your script further with progressively harder drills covering multiple stocks, date ranges, and a simple watchlist tracker.
- Set up a working Python environment for pulling market data
- Write a script that fetches live NSE stock price data
- Clean and structure raw API data into usable tables with pandas
Setting Up Python for Financial Data Analysis
Get your Python environment, core libraries and first real NSE/BSE data pipeline working, so you're ready to analyse Indian markets in code instead of spreadsheets.
- Install and configure Python, VS Code and Jupyter for financial analysis work
- Manage virtual environments and packages so your projects stay reproducible
- Use NumPy and pandas to work with price and returns data
Using NumPy for Matrix Operations in Finance
A hands-on introduction to NumPy built specifically for finance work: representing price series and portfolios as arrays, and using matrix operations to compute portfolio returns, covariance, and risk. For engineers and data-inclined traders who already know some Python and want to stop looping over prices in plain lists. Every example uses real Indian market data conventions: NSE/BSE tickers, Nifty constituents, and data shaped the way you'd pull it from screener.in or a broker API.
Using yfinance and NSEpy to Pull Indian Market Data
A hands-on guide to pulling real Indian market data with Python. Covers yfinance for NSE and BSE tickers (historical OHLCV, adjusted close, corporate actions) and NSEpy for NSE-specific data that yfinance doesn't cover, including F&O and delivery percentage. Built for engineering graduates, coders, and systematizing traders who want a working data pipeline, not just theory, with every example run against real Nifty 50 and F&O tickers.
Corporate Finance
10 courses
Building a Simple Cap Table Using Excel or Carta
A hands-on walkthrough for anyone who has been handed cap table ownership without a finance background: HR and L&D teams issuing ESOPs, treasury and finance-adjacent staff maintaining ownership records, and startup founders tracking their own equity. Starts with what a cap table actually is and the terms that trip people up (authorized vs issued vs outstanding vs fully diluted), then builds one from scratch in Excel, layering in founder equity, an ESOP pool with vesting, and convertible instruments like CCPS and SAFEs. From there it covers how a priced funding round changes the numbers and how to model dilution across rounds, before closing with when and how to move the whole thing into Carta and keep it audit-ready.
- What a cap table is and the ownership terms every stakeholder should know
- How to build a cap table from scratch in Excel, step by step
- How to model an ESOP pool, vesting schedules, and convertible instruments like CCPS and SAFEs
Introduction to Corporate Fundraising: Equity vs Debt
A plain-language, India-specific introduction to how companies raise money, built for founders, treasury teams, HR and L&D professionals, and employees outside finance who want to understand the funding decisions shaping their company. Learn why companies raise capital, what it really means to sell ownership versus borrow, and where each kind of money comes from in India: angels, VCs, PE funds, IPOs, QIPs and rights issues on one side; banks, NBFCs, venture debt and corporate bonds on the other. Understand covenants, collateral, credit ratings and what happens under the IBC when repayment fails. Compare the true cost of equity and debt, see how leverage magnifies both returns and risk, meet the hybrids in between, and finish with a practical decision framework, a walkthrough of reading any listed company's funding mix on screener.in, and a case study of two Indian companies that funded growth in opposite ways.
Introduction to Employee Stock Options (ESOPs) Explained
A plain-language, India-specific guide to employee stock options, built for employees outside finance, HR and L&D teams, treasury professionals and startup founders. Learn why companies share ownership with employees, how ESOPs differ from RSUs, SARs and sweat equity, and what grant, vesting, cliff, exercise price and expiry really mean. Follow an option from the grant letter to the day you sell the shares, including what happens when you resign, get let go or your company is acquired. Understand what your options are actually worth, why listed and unlisted company ESOPs are very different things, and how buybacks and secondary sales turn paper wealth into cash. Get the tax picture right, from perquisite tax at exercise to capital gains at sale and the deferral available to eligible startups, and see the rules that govern ESOPs under SEBI and the Companies Act. Finish by looking at ESOPs from the company's side, covering pool design, accounting cost and dilution, and a case study of real Indian ESOP outcomes.
Introduction to Financial Statements for Non Finance Managers
A plain-language, India-specific introduction to financial statements, built for managers outside finance, treasury teams, HR and L&D professionals, and founders who sit in review meetings where revenue, EBITDA, working capital and cash flow decide budgets and bonuses. Learn where to find the numbers in an Indian company's annual report, the accounting basics that shape them, and how to read a profit and loss statement, balance sheet and cash flow statement line by line. See which lines your own department creates, from employee costs and overheads to receivables, inventory and payables, and why reported profit is not money in the bank. Connect the three statements through a single transaction, use a handful of ratios that matter to managers, read variance reports and MIS with confidence, build a business case finance will take seriously, spot red flags, and finish by working through a real Indian company's annual report the way a manager should.
Introduction to Startup Fundraising: Seed to Series A
A practical, India-specific walkthrough of how startups actually raise money from their first cheque to a Series A, built for founders, treasury and finance teams, HR and L&D professionals, and employees who want to understand the funding rounds shaping their company. Learn why startups raise and when they should not, how the funding ladder runs from bootstrapping and friends and family to pre-seed, seed and Series A, and who writes the cheques in India: angels, angel networks, micro VCs, institutional VCs and government schemes. Understand what investors look for at each stage, the traction and unit economics metrics that matter, how to build a pitch deck and get the legal house in order. See how pre-money, post-money, dilution, ESOP pools and instruments like CCPS, CCDs and iSAFEs work, how a fundraise is run, how to read a term sheet, and what due diligence, definitive agreements and the Indian compliance layer involve. Finish with life after the round, how startups bridge the gap from seed to Series A, and a case study following one Indian startup through both rounds.
Understanding Cap Tables and Equity Dilution for Founders
A plain-language, India-specific guide to the cap table from the founder's side of the table, built for startup founders, treasury teams, HR and L&D professionals, and employees who want to understand how ownership in their company is divided and why it keeps changing. Learn what a cap table records, how authorised capital, issued shares and face value work under the Companies Act, and why fully diluted ownership is the only number that matters. Split equity among co-founders without wrecking the partnership, protect the company with founder vesting and leaver clauses, and hand out equity to early hires and advisors sensibly. See exactly how each fundraise dilutes you, why the ESOP pool is negotiated before the round, and how CCDs and iSAFEs land on the cap table. Go beyond percentages to understand control, board seats, liquidation preference, anti-dilution and secondary sales, then learn to keep a clean, compliant cap table through allotments, transfers and MCA filings. Finish with the mistakes that break due diligence and a case study following one founder's stake from incorporation to Series C.
Understanding Cash Flow Management for Businesses
A practical, India-specific introduction to managing cash inside a business, built for founders, treasury teams, HR and L&D professionals, and employees outside finance whose decisions quietly move the company's bank balance. Understand why profitable companies still run out of money, how the cash conversion cycle works, and how Indian businesses manage receivables, payables and inventory, including TReDS and the MSME 45-day payment rule. Learn to build a simple 13-week cash forecast, plan burn and runway, choose between cash credit, overdraft and bill discounting, schedule GST, TDS and advance tax outflows, and park surplus cash sensibly. Finish by seeing how every department affects cash, spotting the early warning signs of a cash crunch, and working through a real-world style cash crisis case study.
Understanding Corporate Taxation Basics for Business Owners
A plain-language, India-specific introduction to how businesses are taxed, built for founders, treasury teams, HR and L&D professionals, and employees outside finance who want to understand the tax decisions shaping their company. Learn how your business structure changes your tax bill, how accounting profit becomes taxable income, and what the Income-tax Act, 2025 changed. Understand corporate tax rates, surcharge and cess, the concessional 22% regime, MAT, and how to read a listed company's effective tax rate on screener.in. See how advance tax, TDS, TCS, tax audits and ITR filing work through the year, get a working grasp of GST and input tax credit, and learn what salary, dividends, buybacks and ESOPs really cost the company and its people. Finish with startup tax benefits, the line between tax planning and evasion, and a case study tracing one Indian SME's tax year from profit to paid.
Understanding Financial Markets: A Primer for Non Finance Employees
A plain-language, India-specific primer on how financial markets work, built for employees outside finance, treasury teams, HR and L&D professionals, and founders who keep hearing about markets in board updates, news headlines and salary conversations. Understand how money flows from savers to businesses, who the key players and regulators are, and how the equity, debt, currency and commodity markets actually operate on NSE, BSE and beyond. Learn how companies raise money through IPOs, QIPs, bonds and commercial paper, why an RBI repo rate change moves your company's borrowing costs, what credit ratings signal, and how businesses hedge rupee and input cost risk. Finish by connecting inflation, GDP and FII flows to market moves, understanding insider trading rules and trading windows at listed employers, seeing where your ESOPs, EPF, NPS and SIPs meet the markets, and tracing one RBI rate decision all the way to a company and its employees.
Understanding Working Capital Management for Businesses
A practical, India-specific introduction to working capital, built for founders, treasury teams, HR and L&D professionals, and employees outside finance whose everyday decisions lock up or release a company's money. Learn to read the working capital lines on a balance sheet, tell gross, net and operating working capital apart, and calculate liquidity ratios and the working capital cycle step by step. See why FMCG, retail, capital goods, pharma and IT companies look so different, and track real trends on screener.in. Understand working capital policy, permanent vs temporary needs, and how to estimate requirement. Get hands-on with credit policy, receivables ageing, EOQ and ABC analysis, supplier terms and the MSME 45-day payment rule. Learn how Indian banks set drawing power, how cash credit, WCDL, commercial paper, factoring and TReDS compare, and finish by linking working capital to growth and valuation, spotting red flags, and fixing a working capital crunch in a case study.
M&A & Valuation
1 course
Introduction to Business Valuation for Founders and Managers
A plain-language, India-specific introduction to how businesses are valued, built for founders, managers, treasury teams and HR professionals who deal with valuation without being finance specialists. Understand the difference between price, value and worth, and where valuation shows up in real work: fundraises, ESOP grants, acquisitions, buybacks and share transfers. Learn which numbers actually drive value, how multiples like P/E and EV/EBITDA work, how to bridge enterprise value to equity value, and how to build a simple DCF without drowning in jargon. Finish with the Indian rulebook on registered valuers, Rule 11UA, FEMA and SEBI pricing, the everyday management decisions that move your company's valuation, and a case study valuing one Indian private company three different ways.
Career Fundamentals
1 course
Building a Finance Resume: What Recruiters Look For
A practical, no-fluff guide to writing a finance resume that actually gets shortlisted. Covers what recruiters and ATS systems scan for, how to structure a one-page resume, and how to turn internships, certifications and coursework into achievement-based bullet points recruiters take seriously.
- What finance recruiters and ATS filters actually screen for in the first few seconds
- How to structure and format a one-page resume that survives both a bot and a human reader
- How to write achievement-based bullet points instead of restating job descriptions
Macro & Markets
7 courses
A Brief History of the Indian Stock Market
A concise, story-driven history of the Indian stock market for anyone curious about how it actually came to be, no prior market knowledge needed. Start under the literal banyan tree where the Bombay Stock Exchange began, walk through the broker rings and badla system that ran Indian markets before there was a real regulator, and see how the 1991 crisis and the Harshad Mehta scam forced India to build SEBI and the NSE almost from scratch. Then trace how the market modernised: paper shares gave way to demat accounts and the NSDL, the Ketan Parekh scam exposed the next generation of gaps, and settlement moved from a leisurely weekly cycle down to T+1. Written for general market enthusiasts, history and macro curious readers, and investors from every track who want the origin story behind the market they trade in today.
Introduction to Famous Stock Market Crashes: 1929, 2008, and Beyond
A beginner-friendly, India-first tour of the stock market crashes that shaped modern investing, built for market enthusiasts, history and macro curious readers, and investors from every track who want to understand why markets collapse and what those collapses teach. Learn how bubbles form, why leverage and panic turn a fall into a crash, and walk through the Great Crash of 1929, Black Monday 1987, the dot-com bust and the 2008 Global Financial Crisis. Then turn to India's own crashes, from the Harshad Mehta scam of 1992 and the Ketan Parekh crash of 2001 to the March 2020 COVID fall on the Nifty and Sensex, and see how SEBI, RBI and the exchanges responded. Finish with the common threads behind every crash and a practical framework for building a portfolio that survives the next one.
Introduction to Global Stock Markets: US, Europe, and Asia Compared
A beginner-friendly, India-first tour of the world's major stock markets, built for market enthusiasts, macro curious readers, and investors from every track. Learn how the biggest exchanges compare by size and listings, how MSCI and FTSE classify developed, emerging, and frontier markets, and where NSE and BSE rank. Explore the US market through NYSE, Nasdaq, the S&P 500, and SEC rules compared with SEBI's; Europe through London, Euronext, Frankfurt, and indices like the FTSE 100, DAX, and STOXX 600; and Asia through Japan, China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Korea, and Singapore. Finish by comparing valuations, earnings growth, and sector mix across regions, understanding how currencies, time zones, and FPI flows move the Nifty, and building a simple global dashboard to check before NSE opens.
Introduction to Market Cycles Through History
A beginner-friendly, history-first tour of how markets have moved in cycles for over three centuries, built for market enthusiasts, history and macro curious readers, and investors from every track. Learn the classic cycle theories and the credit and interest rate engine behind them, walk through the global eras that shaped modern markets, from early speculative manias to the post-war boom, 1970s stagflation and Japan's lost decades, then trace India's own market history era by era, from the early Bombay brokers to liberalisation, the 2003 to 2008 supercycle, the long grind that followed and the SIP-driven era of today. Extend the lens to commodity, interest rate and sector cycles, and finish with a practical, cycle-aware way to use history without being fooled by it.
Macroeconomics for Retail Investors
A practical, India-specific guide to the macro forces that actually move your portfolio: GDP growth, inflation, RBI interest rate policy, the rupee, and global linkages like the US Fed and crude oil. Built for retail investors, first-time demat holders, and salaried professionals who want to read a Union Budget speech, an RBI monetary policy statement, or a GDP print and understand what it means for the Nifty, their EMI, and their FD returns, not just repeat headlines. Uses real Indian data releases, RBI and MoSPI sources, and NSE/BSE market reactions throughout.
- See why macro trends matter to your own portfolio
- Understand GDP and India's growth story in context
- Track inflation, CPI, WPI and RBI interest rate moves
Understanding Global Financial Crises: A Beginner's Timeline
A beginner-friendly, India-first timeline of the financial crises that reshaped the global economy, built for market enthusiasts, history and macro curious readers, and investors from every track. Learn the difference between banking, currency and sovereign debt crises, and how credit, confidence and contagion turn a local problem into a global one. Walk through the Great Depression, the end of Bretton Woods and the oil shocks, the Latin American debt crisis, India's own 1991 balance of payments crisis, the 1997 Asian crisis, Russia and LTCM, the 2008 global banking crisis, the Eurozone debt crisis, the 2013 Taper Tantrum, the IL&FS and NBFC crisis, and the 2020 to 2023 cycle of stimulus, inflation and bank failures. Finish with a practical playbook of warning signs every Indian investor can track using RBI, SEBI and market data.
Understanding How Central Banks Shape Markets: A Beginner's Guide
A beginner-friendly guide to the institutions that quietly set the price of money, built for market enthusiasts, history and macro curious readers, and investors from every track. Start with what a central bank is and how the RBI, its Monetary Policy Committee and India's 4% inflation target work. Open up the full toolkit, from policy rates, the SDF and MSF to CRR, SLR, open market operations, liquidity management and forward guidance. Follow policy as it flows into G-Sec yields, Nifty valuations and rate-sensitive sectors, the rupee and forex reserves, gold, real estate and your FD. Widen the lens to the US Fed, quantitative easing and tightening, and the ECB, BoJ and PBoC, then relive the crises where central banks took centre stage: 2008, the 2013 taper tantrum, demonetisation, the IL&FS liquidity crunch, COVID 2020 and the 2022 global tightening cycle. Finish with a practical framework for reading central bank signals without overreacting.
- Explain what a central bank does and how the RBI and its Monetary Policy Committee make decisions
- Distinguish the repo rate, SDF, MSF, CRR, SLR and open market operations, and what each one controls
- Trace how a policy decision moves G-Sec yields, the Nifty, rate-sensitive sectors, the rupee and gold
Alternative Investing
34 courses
Case Study: Crude Oil's Negative Price Event of 2020
On 20 April 2020, the expiring WTI crude oil futures contract on the CME did something that had never happened before: it settled at minus $37.63 a barrel. Sellers were paying buyers to take oil off their hands. Hours earlier, on India's own MCX, the May crude contract had already settled at minus Rs 2,884 a barrel, a shock that wiped out accounts and triggered a wave of broker disputes. This case study builds up from first principles, what a futures contract actually promises, why storage costs create contango, why COVID-era demand collapse filled every storage tank on earth, and then walks through exactly how and why the price went negative on both exchanges. It closes with the practical lessons for Indian retail traders: what changed in margin and circuit rules after the event, and a simple framework for deciding whether commodity futures belong in your portfolio at all.
- What a futures contract actually obligates you to do, and why expiry and physical settlement matter
- Contango versus backwardation, and how storage costs shape the futures curve
- Why COVID-era demand collapse in early 2020 filled global storage capacity to its limits
Case Study: Embassy Office Parks REIT, India's First Listed REIT
In April 2019, Embassy Office Parks REIT became the first Real Estate Investment Trust to list in India, giving retail investors a way to own a slice of Grade-A office space without buying an entire building. This case study walks through what a REIT actually is, how the Embassy IPO was priced and received, what the trust owns and how it earns rent, how distributions and taxation work for unit holders, and how the units have actually performed since listing. Built for retail investors exploring alternatives, HNIs diversifying beyond listed equity, and first-timers curious about real estate and REITs.
- What a REIT is and how it differs from buying property directly or owning a real estate stock
- Why Embassy Office Parks was chosen to be India's first listed REIT, and how its IPO was priced
- What the trust actually owns: the Grade-A office portfolio behind the units
Case Study: Gold Prices During the 2020 Pandemic, A Commodity Case Study
When the COVID crash hit in March 2020, gold did something most Indian investors had never seen it do at that scale: it kept climbing while equities fell apart, and by August it had touched an all-time high in rupee terms. This case study walks through why gold behaves this way in a crisis, the real forces (real yields, a weakening rupee, and a global scramble for safety) that drove the 2020 rally, and what the sharp pullback that followed teaches about buying into a hot trade after the fact. Along the way, you will learn the practical side too: the different ways Indians actually hold gold, from physical jewellery to Sovereign Gold Bonds and Gold ETFs, and how to weigh them against each other.
- Why Indians hold gold and where it realistically fits in a portfolio
- The practical differences between physical gold, SGBs, Gold ETFs, and digital gold
- A clear timeline of gold's move from the March 2020 crash to its August 2020 peak
Case Study: Gurugram vs Noida, Comparing Real Estate Investment Returns
Real estate is the alternative asset every Indian investor already has an opinion on, usually an untested one. This case study builds a real comparison of Gurugram and Noida as investment destinations: the metrics that actually measure return, the data behind them, and the risks a brochure will not tell you about. By the end, you will have a framework you can reuse for any two cities, not just these two.
- Where real estate fits next to equities and mutual funds in a portfolio, and what its illiquidity actually costs you
- How to compute rental yield, capital appreciation and total return for a property, not just guess at them
- A worked, numbers-first comparison of Gurugram and Noida as investment markets
Case Study: How Early Investors in Zomato's Seed Round Made Returns
A worked case study on Info Edge's early bet on Zomato, from its 2010 seed round through to the 2021 IPO. Built for retail and HNI investors curious about startup investing: how seed rounds actually work, how ownership and returns evolve across funding rounds, what the numbers looked like by the time Zomato listed, and what routes exist for Indian investors who want exposure to deals like this one.
- How Zomato's early story unfolded and why Info Edge chose to back it at the seed stage
- What a seed round actually is, and where it sits on the startup funding ladder
- How ownership, valuation and dilution work across multiple funding rounds
Case Study: How an Angel Investor Evaluated a Failed Startup Bet
A foundation-level case study built around Meera Iyer, a Bengaluru product manager turned angel investor, who writes an eight lakh rupee cheque into Aaranya, a D2C sustainable fashion brand, at its seed round. Each chapter follows one stage of the bet: what angel investing actually involves and how Indian deals get structured through SAFE notes and CCPS, the market, team and valuation diligence Meera ran before signing, the early warning signs that got explained away as the startup burned cash faster than it grew, and the down round and shutdown that followed. Built for retail and HNI investors curious about startup investing as an alternative asset class, with the evaluation mistakes left in rather than smoothed over.
- Understand what angel investing actually involves in India, and how it differs from public market investing
- Read a startup's early business model and market size the way an angel does during a first evaluation
- Understand how Indian angel deals get structured: SAFE notes, CCPS, valuation caps and cap tables
Case Study: The 2013 Rupee Crash, A Forex Market Case Study
In the summer of 2013, the rupee fell from around 55 to the dollar to nearly 69 in a matter of weeks, India's steepest currency slide since the 1991 balance-of-payments crisis. This case study walks through why a single comment from the US Federal Reserve chairman could hit the Indian currency so hard, what a current account deficit actually has to do with the rupee's value, and how the RBI's emergency toolkit, including a little-known swap window for NRI deposits, pulled the currency back from the edge. Along the way, you will learn how a forex crisis ripples into equities, bonds, gold, and the wallets of ordinary importers, exporters, and NRI families.
- How the rupee is valued and traded, and what actually moves USD/INR day to day
- Why the 2013 US Federal Reserve taper tantrum hit India harder than most emerging markets
- How a widening current account deficit made India vulnerable heading into the crash
Fixed Income and Alternate Asset Classes for Beginners
A practical, India-specific introduction to everything beyond stocks and equity mutual funds: fixed deposits, government and corporate bonds, debt mutual funds, PPF, EPF and NPS, REITs, InvITs, gold, and other alternate assets. Built for first-time demat holders, college students, salaried professionals, homemakers and retirees who want a safer, more diversified portfolio without getting lost in jargon. Uses real Indian instruments and platforms throughout: RBI Retail Direct, NSE/BSE-listed bonds and REITs, Sovereign Gold Bonds, Zerodha, Groww and CDSL/NSDL.
- Go beyond bank FDs into bonds and government savings schemes
- Understand bond yields, interest rate risk, REITs and InvITs
- Build a diversified portfolio with gold and alternate assets
Introduction to Alternative Investment Funds (AIFs) in India
A clear, India-specific introduction to Alternative Investment Funds: what they are, how SEBI regulates them, and how Category I, II and III AIFs actually make money through venture capital, private equity, private credit, real estate and hedge fund strategies. Learn the ₹1 crore minimum and accredited investor rules, decode the fee stack of management fees, hurdle rates and carry, read IRR, TVPI and DPI like an allocator, understand how each category is taxed, and evaluate a real AIF offering before you commit capital. Built for retail investors exploring alternatives, HNIs diversifying beyond listed markets, and first-timers curious about startup and real estate funds.
- Understand what an AIF is and how it works
- Learn SEBI rules across Category I, II and III AIFs
- Evaluate fees, returns and taxation before investing in an AIF
Introduction to Angel Investing: What It Means to Invest in Startups
A clear, India-specific introduction to angel investing: what it actually means to put your own money into an early-stage startup, how funding rounds from pre-seed to Series A work, and why the power law decides almost every outcome. Learn pre-money and post-money valuation, dilution, CCPS and convertible notes, the legal routes to invest in India including angel networks, syndicates and SEBI-registered angel funds, the tax and regulatory basics, and the term sheet clauses that protect or hurt you. Finish by evaluating founders and markets, sizing your allocation, and building a first angel portfolio without making the classic first-timer mistakes. Built for retail investors exploring alternatives, HNIs diversifying beyond listed markets, and first-timers curious about startups.
- Learn what angel investing actually means for investors
- Understand startup funding rounds and the power law
- Evaluate startups and build a diversified angel portfolio
Introduction to Commodity Trading: Gold, Silver, Crude, and Agri Commodities
A clear, India-specific introduction to commodity trading: what commodities are, why investors hold them, and how they trade on MCX, NCDEX, NSE and BSE. Learn how commodity futures and options actually work, including lot sizes, tick values, margins, mark-to-market, settlement, contango and backwardation. Then go market by market: what drives gold and silver, every way to own precious metals in India, how crude oil and natural gas trade, and how agri commodities and base metals behave. Finish with leverage and risk management, the tax treatment of commodity trades, and a practical first step on a broker like Zerodha without repeating the classic beginner mistakes. Built for retail investors exploring alternatives, HNIs diversifying beyond equities, and curious first-timers.
- Learn why commodities trade and how derivatives work
- Trade gold, silver, crude oil and agri commodities
- Understand the risk, tax and rules to get started
Introduction to Forex Trading: How Currency Markets Work
A clear, India-specific introduction to the foreign exchange market: how currencies are quoted and priced, who actually trades the rupee and why, and what really moves USD/INR, from interest rate differentials and crude oil to FPI flows and RBI intervention. Learn to read bid, ask, spreads and forward premiums, understand exactly what is legal for Indian residents under FEMA and the RBI Alert List, and see how exchange-traded currency futures and options work on NSE and BSE, including lot sizes, margins, leverage, position sizing and taxation. Finish by applying it to hedging, to your own portfolio's currency exposure, and to spotting the offshore forex scams that trap first-timers. Built for retail investors exploring alternatives, HNIs diversifying beyond listed equity, and first-timers curious about currency markets.
- Understand how the forex market actually works
- Read currency quotes and see what moves exchange rates
- Trade forex legally in India, managing risk and tax
Introduction to REITs: Investing in Real Estate Without Buying Property
A practical, India-specific introduction to Real Estate Investment Trusts. Learn how a REIT turns office parks and malls into units you can buy on NSE and BSE for the price of a few thousand rupees, how the sponsor, manager and trustee structure works under SEBI's REIT Regulations, and where the rent actually comes from. Understand the 90% distribution rule, why a REIT payout is split into interest, dividend and debt repayment, and how each piece is taxed. Compare India's listed office and retail REITs, see how InvITs and SM REITs differ, and learn to judge a REIT on occupancy, WALE, leverage, price-to-NAV and distribution yield before you buy. Built for retail investors exploring alternatives, HNIs diversifying beyond listed equity, and first-timers who want real estate exposure without a home loan.
Introduction to Real Estate as an Asset Class in India
A clear, India-specific introduction to real estate as an investment, not just a place to live. Understand how property really compares with equity, debt and gold, the difference between residential, commercial and land, and the two engines of return: rental yield and capital appreciation. Learn the true cost of buying, from stamp duty and GST to home loan interest, see how RERA and title checks protect you, explore ways to own real estate without buying a flat through REITs, SM REITs, listed developers and AIFs, and work out how property income and gains are taxed. Built for retail investors exploring alternatives, HNIs diversifying beyond listed markets, and first-timers deciding whether property belongs in their portfolio.
- Explore real estate as an investor, beyond just a home
- Learn how property makes and loses money over time
- Own real estate through REITs, beyond buying property directly
Practice Drills: Calculating Rental Yield on a Sample Property
A practice-first drill for anyone treating real estate as an investment, not just a home. Using one sample Indian property, you will work through gross yield, net yield, and how to tell whether the result is actually worth the capital tied up, instead of relying on broker pitches or gut feel.
- Tell apart the two ways real estate returns money: rental yield and price appreciation
- Set up a full property income and cost sheet for a sample flat
- Calculate gross rental yield step by step
Practice Drills: Comparing Two REITs Using Basic Metrics
A hands-on drill set for comparing two listed Indian REITs using the metrics that actually matter, instead of just looking at distribution yield in isolation. Built for retail investors exploring alternatives, HNI investors diversifying beyond equity and debt, and first-timers curious about real estate without buying property. Walks through what a REIT actually owns and pays out, the five comparison metrics worth trusting (distribution yield, NAV premium or discount, occupancy rate, WALE, and gearing ratio), where to actually pull these numbers from in India, and then puts that knowledge to work on a real side-by-side drill comparing two listed office REITs.
Practice Drills: Evaluating a Startup Pitch Deck as an Angel Investor
A practice-first course for retail and HNI investors exploring angel investing. Instead of another lecture on how startups raise money, this course puts a real-looking pitch deck in front of you slide by slide and drills you on what to check, what to question, and what should make you walk away. Every drill uses Indian startup context: SAFE notes and CCPS, DPIIT recognition, AIF structures used for angel pooling in India, and the kind of numbers Indian founders actually put on slides.
- Spot structural red flags in a pitch deck before you even get to the numbers
- Sanity-check TAM, SAM and SOM claims instead of taking them at face value
- Read unit economics slides: CAC, LTV, burn rate and runway
Practice Drills: Reading a Currency Pair Quote and Calculating Pips
A practice-first companion for anyone exploring currency markets alongside their usual equity or fund investments. Instead of re-explaining forex theory, this course puts you through real quote-reading and pip-calculation drills using actual USD/INR and EUR/INR examples, so you can read a quote and work out what a price move is actually worth without hesitating.
- Read a currency pair quote and identify the base and quote currency
- Tell a direct quote from an indirect quote, and why USD/INR is direct for an Indian trader
- Read a bid-ask spread and work out what it costs on a trade
Practice Drills: Tracking a Commodity Price Trend Over a Quarter
A practice-drill course, not a lecture course. Over one quarter, you build and run a real tracking log on MCX gold: setting it up, reading price action, confirming trends with moving averages, telling a real trend from a whipsaw, and reviewing what the data actually showed you at the end. Every lesson pushes you back to your own log, not just the reading.
- How to set up a weekly commodity price tracking log from scratch
- How to read price action on a commodity chart without relying on indicators first
- How to use moving averages to confirm a trend rather than just eyeball it
Practice Drills: Verifying a Real Estate Project on RERA's Portal
A practical, step by step drill course for verifying a real estate project's RERA registration before you invest. You will learn what RERA registration actually guarantees, how to search and read a project's listing on your state's RERA portal, how to cross check the promoter and professional certificates on file, and how to spot red flags before signing anything.
- What a RERA registration number actually guarantees, and what it does not
- How to search for and open a project's listing on your state's RERA portal
- How to read a project page: promoter details, land title, approvals, and timelines
Setting Up an MCX Trading Account for Commodity Trading
A practical, hands-on guide to opening and understanding a commodity trading account on the Multi Commodity Exchange of India (MCX). Learn what actually trades on MCX, how a commodity contract differs from an equity trade, and who regulates the exchange and protects your money. Walk through the real process of activating the commodity segment with a broker like Zerodha, the documents and eligibility checks involved, and what to compare before choosing one. Understand margins, contract specifications, and how to read a live commodity contract before placing your first order. Built for retail investors, HNIs looking to diversify beyond equities, and anyone curious about commodities who wants to set up correctly instead of guessing their way through a broker's app.
- What MCX is, what commodities trade on it, and how it differs from NSE/BSE equity trading
- How commodity contracts, lot sizes, and expiries work
- How to activate the commodity trading segment with your broker, and what documents you need
Understanding Currency Pairs and Exchange Rate Basics
A ground-floor primer for Indian retail and HNI investors who have never looked at currencies as something you can understand, let alone invest around. Before any talk of NSE currency futures, RBI reference rates, or parity theories, this course answers the questions a first-timer actually has: what is a currency pair, why does INR/USD look different from USD/INR, why isn't the rupee 'worth less' in any meaningful sense, and where do exchange rates actually show up in an ordinary Indian's financial life. No trading mechanics, no macro theory, no formulas. Just the vocabulary and mental models needed before moving on to how currency markets actually work.
- Explain what a currency pair is and why every exchange rate is really a ratio between two currencies
- Read INR/USD and USD/INR correctly and know which one you will actually see quoted in India
- Understand why the rupee and the dollar are not 'worth' different amounts in any meaningful sense
Understanding MCX and Commodity Exchanges in India
A structural look at how commodity exchanges in India actually work, built around MCX. Understand how an exchange functions as an institution: order matching and price discovery, MCX's corporate structure and public listing, and the Clearing Corporation and Settlement Guarantee Fund that stand behind every trade. Then go inside the regulatory layer, from the 2015 FMC-SEBI merger to membership structures, position limits, circuit filters and market surveillance. Finish by placing MCX in context against NCDEX, ICEX and global exchanges like CME, ICE and LME, and how liquidity and open interest actually behave in the Indian market. Built for retail investors exploring alternatives, HNIs diversifying beyond equities, and curious first-timers who want to understand the exchange itself, not just how to place a trade.
Understanding Rental Yield vs Capital Appreciation
A focused, India-specific guide to the two ways property makes money: the rent it pays you every month and the price it gains over years. Learn to calculate gross and net rental yield properly, understand why Indian residential yields sit far below home loan rates while offices and warehouses pay more, and separate genuine capital appreciation from inflation, listing-price hype and hidden costs. Combine both engines into one honest number using cap rate, price-to-rent, CAGR and XIRR, see how leverage and tax change the answer, and decide whether a yield-first or growth-first strategy, or a REIT, suits your goals. Built for retail investors exploring alternatives, HNIs diversifying beyond listed markets, and first-timers weighing their first property purchase.
- Learn the two ways property actually pays investors
- Calculate rental yield and capital appreciation in depth
- Measure combined returns and choose your investing strategy
Understanding Residential vs Commercial Real Estate Investing
A practical, India-specific comparison of the two biggest segments of property investing: homes you rent to families and offices, shops and warehouses you lease to businesses. See how the Indian housing, Grade A office, retail and warehousing markets actually work, why residential yields sit near 2 to 3 percent while commercial assets pay 7 to 9 percent, and what you give up for that extra income. Learn how 11-month rent agreements differ from long commercial leases with lock-ins and escalations, what pre-leased property and lease rental discounting mean, and how ticket size, GST, tax, liquidity and vacancy risk change the answer. Finish with a Hyderabad case study, a decision framework, and the lower-ticket routes to commercial exposure through REITs, SM REITs and fractional ownership. Built for retail investors exploring alternatives, HNIs diversifying beyond listed markets, and first-timers deciding which kind of property to buy.
- See residential and commercial real estate as different businesses
- Compare residential and commercial investing head to head
- Choose the real estate route that fits your goals
Understanding Startup Equity, Valuation, and Cap Tables for Investors
A practical, India-specific guide to what you actually own when you invest in a startup. Learn how share capital, CCPS and fully diluted ownership work, how early-stage startups are valued using the scorecard, Berkus and VC methods, and how Indian rules like Rule 11UA and FEMA pricing shape the numbers. Build a cap table round by round, see how ESOP pools and convertibles quietly dilute you, track your stake from seed to Series C, and understand down rounds, anti-dilution and pro-rata rights. Finish by learning why a headline valuation is not what your stake is worth, how liquidation preferences split exit proceeds, and follow one angel cheque from first round to exit. Built for retail investors exploring alternatives, HNIs diversifying into private markets, and first-timers curious about startups.
- Understand what you actually own in a startup
- Read and build a cap table with confidence
- Protect your stake through dilution and down rounds
Understanding the Risk Return Profile of Alternative Assets vs Traditional Assets
A clear, India-specific guide to comparing alternative assets with the traditional trio of equity, debt and gold on equal terms. Learn why risk in alternatives goes far beyond volatility: liquidity, valuation, leverage and manager risk, the illiquidity premium, and the smoothed, appraisal-based returns that make private assets look calmer than they are. Benchmark long-run Nifty, fixed income and gold behaviour, then profile physical real estate, REITs and InvITs, PE, VC and angel investing, private credit and P2P lending, and commodities, collectibles and crypto. Compare them fairly using CAGR, IRR and yield after fees and tax, build a side-by-side scorecard, and decide how much of a portfolio alternatives deserve. Built for retail investors exploring alternatives, HNIs diversifying beyond listed markets, and first-timers curious about real estate and startups.
- Compare traditional and alternative assets on one question
- View risk through a wider lens than usual
- Add alternative assets into your portfolio the right way
Using AngelList India for Startup Investing Opportunities
A practical, platform-focused guide to investing in Indian startups through AngelList India. Learn how the platform is structured under the AIF route, what eligibility and KYC actually involve, and the real differences between syndicates, funds and direct deals on AngelList India. Walk through the fees and carry you will actually pay, how to read a deal memo and cap table, and a due diligence checklist for evaluating early-stage startups before you commit capital. Built for retail investors exploring alternatives, HNIs diversifying beyond listed markets, and first-timers curious about startup and real estate investing who want to actually use the platform, not just understand angel investing in theory.
Using Groww or Similar Platforms for Investing in REITs
A practical, platform-level walkthrough of investing in Indian REITs through apps like Groww, Zerodha and similar brokers, for anyone who already has a demat account and wants to add real estate exposure without buying property. Starts with what a REIT actually is and how India's listed REITs (Embassy Office Parks, Mindspace Business Parks, Brookfield India, Nexus Select Trust) work, then moves into the mechanics: opening the order screen, reading the listing page, and telling REIT-specific data apart from a regular stock quote. Covers how to judge a REIT before buying using distribution yield, NAV premium or discount, occupancy and WALE, walks through how REIT distributions and capital gains are actually taxed in India, and closes with sizing a position, judging liquidity, and the mistakes first-time REIT investors on these platforms tend to make. Written for retail investors exploring alternatives to direct equity and mutual funds, HNIs diversifying beyond stocks, and anyone curious about real estate exposure without the down payment.
Using LetsVenture for Angel Investment Deals in India
Angel investing in unlisted startups has moved from founder networks onto platforms like LetsVenture, but the mechanics, the paperwork and the risk are very different from buying a stock on NSE or BSE. This course walks through how LetsVenture actually works: the AIF and syndicate structures your money moves through, the regulatory rules SEBI places on angel funds, how to read a pitch deck and cap table, what due diligence the platform gives you versus what you have to do yourself, and what really happens after you wire the money, including the long odds of any single startup returning your capital.
- How LetsVenture's AIF and syndicate structures actually move your money into a startup
- The SEBI angel fund rules that govern who can invest and how much
- How to read a startup pitch deck, cap table and term sheet before committing capital
Using MagicBricks and 99acres for Real Estate Market Research
Real estate is one of the largest asset classes for Indian households, but most retail investors and HNIs have no repeatable process for researching it the way they do stocks or mutual funds. This course teaches you to use MagicBricks and 99acres, India's two largest property portals, to read locality price trends, verify listings, and build a shortlist before you ever contact a broker.
- Where real estate fits alongside equities and mutual funds when you're diversifying
- How to navigate MagicBricks and 99acres and know which platform to use for what
- How to read locality price trends, rental yields, and appreciation data on both platforms
Using MetaTrader for Forex Trading Basics
A practical, India-specific walkthrough of the MetaTrader platform (MT4 and MT5): what it actually is, how retail forex trading works through it, and exactly where the legal line sits for Indian residents under FEMA and RBI rules. Learn to install and configure the platform, read its charts and Market Watch window, place and manage market, limit and stop orders, and use stop-loss and take-profit levels to control risk, all practiced on a demo account before any real money is at stake. Builds directly on the legal and market-structure grounding from Introduction to Forex Trading, focused entirely on the mechanics of the tool itself. Built for retail investors exploring alternatives, HNIs diversifying beyond listed equity, and first-timers curious about how a live trading platform actually works.
Using RERA's Website to Verify Real Estate Projects
Every real estate project sold in India is supposed to be registered with its state's RERA authority, and that registration page holds more useful information than any broker's brochure: the promoter's track record, the actual land title, approved layout plans, the promised completion date, and any extensions or complaints filed against the project. This course walks you through finding a project on your state's RERA portal, reading what each section of its filing actually means, and spotting the red flags that separate a legitimate project from one you should walk away from.
- Understand what RERA registration actually guarantees, and what it doesn't
- Find and search for any project on your state's RERA portal
- Read a project's promoter details, land title status and approved plans
Using Smallcase for Alternative Asset Thematic Portfolios
Smallcase lets you invest in ready-made, professionally curated baskets of stocks and ETFs through your existing broker, without opening a new account. This course walks you through how smallcase actually works, the alternative asset themes available on the platform such as gold, REITs, InvITs and global equity, and how to evaluate a thematic smallcase before putting money into it.
- What a smallcase is and how it differs from a mutual fund or a stock
- How to invest in and exit a smallcase through your existing broker
- The alternative asset themes available on smallcase, including gold, REITs, InvITs and global equity
Tax & Wealth Planning
24 courses
Case Study: A First Time Filer's ITR Mistakes and Corrections
Follow a first-time salaried taxpayer through their first ITR filing season in India, from a Form 16 they barely understood to a return that needed correcting after the fact. Each chapter walks through a real category of first-timer mistake, why it happened, and the exact fix, so you can spot and avoid the same errors in your own filing.
- How to read a Form 16 and know what each part means for your return
- How to pick the correct ITR form for a salaried income profile
- Why Form 26AS and AIS matter and how to reconcile them before filing
Case Study: Comparing Tax Outgo Under Old vs New Regime for a Salaried Individual
A single running case study follows one salaried professional's CTC through both the old and new income tax regimes, line by line, to show exactly where the tax outgo diverges and why. Ends with a decision framework you can apply to your own salary slip.
- How the old and new tax regime slabs and deductions actually differ, not just in headline rates
- How to compute tax payable under both regimes for a real salary structure
- Which deductions and exemptions swing the decision, and by how much
Case Study: How a Salaried Professional Structured CTC to Save Tax
Most salaried employees leave money on the table simply because their CTC is structured badly. This case study follows one professional's payslip from a generic, tax-inefficient package to a restructured one, showing exactly which components to negotiate, which exemptions to claim, and which regime to pick.
- How a CTC breaks down into basic, allowances, and employer contributions
- How to compare the old and new tax regimes for your own numbers
- Which salary components are worth negotiating for tax efficiency
Case Study: Understanding a Real Form 16 Line by Line
You already know what Form 16 is. This case study puts that knowledge to work on one real, fully filled-out Form 16 belonging to Rohan, a Bengaluru software engineer, and reads it field by field the way a careful taxpayer should. Verify the employer and TAN details in Part A, work through the quarterly TDS table, and trace Part B's gross salary breakup down to the exemptions and Chapter VI-A deductions actually claimed on this form. Cross-check every number against Form 26AS and AIS, catch a real error planted in this document before it becomes a tax notice, and follow the final figures through to a filed ITR. Built for salaried professionals and first-time taxpayers who want to read their own Form 16 with the same confidence by the end.
- Verify employer, TAN and PAN details in Part A before trusting the rest of the form
- Read the quarterly TDS summary table and confirm it adds up correctly
- Trace a real gross salary breakup through to the exemptions and deductions claimed in Part B
Introduction to Advance Tax and Who Needs to Pay It
A plain-language, India-specific guide to advance tax for salaried professionals, first-time taxpayers and anyone starting their financial planning. Understand why the government collects tax during the year, how advance tax fits alongside TDS and self-assessment tax, and what the Income-tax Act, 2025 and the new tax year mean for you. Learn the 10,000 rupee threshold, why a salaried employee with capital gains, rent, FD interest or freelance income can still owe advance tax, and how investors, F&O traders, freelancers on presumptive taxation and senior citizens are treated. Estimate your liability, follow the 15%, 45%, 75% and 100% instalment schedule, pay online through the e-filing portal and check it in AIS and Form 26AS. Finish by working out the interest for missed or short instalments, avoiding the most common mistakes, and following a case study of one Indian professional planning a full year of advance tax.
- Explain what advance tax is and how it differs from TDS and self-assessment tax
- Decide whether advance tax applies to you using the 10,000 rupee threshold
- Identify the income that makes salaried employees, investors and freelancers liable
Introduction to Capital Gains Tax on Different Asset Classes
A practical, India-specific guide to how capital gains are taxed across every asset class an ordinary investor is likely to own, built for salaried professionals, first-time taxpayers and anyone starting their financial planning. Understand what a capital asset is, how holding periods decide whether a gain is short-term or long-term and how to compute a gain from sale value, cost and expenses under the Income-tax Act, 2025. Work through listed shares, equity mutual funds, ETFs and SIPs, grandfathering for pre-2018 holdings and the tax effect of bonuses, splits and buybacks. Learn how debt funds, bonds and every form of gold are taxed, then move on to property, unlisted shares and ESOPs, US stocks and crypto. Cut your tax legally with loss set-off, tax-loss harvesting, reinvestment exemptions and the basic exemption limit, then report it all correctly in your ITR using your broker P&L and CAS. Finish with the mistakes that trigger notices and a case study of one salaried investor's gains across five asset classes.
- Identify capital assets and classify any gain as short-term or long-term
- Compute capital gains on shares, mutual funds, debt funds, bonds and gold
- Apply grandfathering and handle bonus shares, splits and buybacks
Introduction to Filing Income Tax Returns (ITR) in India
A practical, step-by-step guide to filing your own Income Tax Return in India, built for salaried professionals, first-time taxpayers and anyone starting their financial planning journey. Learn what an ITR is, who must file and why filing pays off even when it is not mandatory. Get your PAN, Aadhaar and income tax portal account in order, read Form 16, Form 26AS and AIS with confidence, and understand the five heads of income, the old vs new tax regime choice and the deductions that actually reduce your tax. Pick the right form from ITR-1 to ITR-4, file and e-verify your return on the income tax portal, then track your refund, handle intimations and notices, and fix mistakes through revised, belated and updated returns. Real Indian numbers, forms and workflows throughout.
Old Tax Regime vs New Tax Regime: Which One to Choose
A practical, India-specific guide to choosing between the old and new income tax regimes, built for salaried professionals, first-time taxpayers and anyone starting their financial planning. Understand why India runs two regimes side by side, how the new regime became the default, and what the slabs, standard deduction and rebate look like under each. Learn exactly which deductions and exemptions you give up in the new regime, from Section 80C, 80D and NPS to HRA and home loan interest, and which benefits survive in both. Compare your tax step by step, work out the breakeven level of deductions where the old regime starts to win, and follow worked examples across salary levels. Finish by learning how to declare your choice to your employer, the switching rules for salaried and business income, how to pick your regime while filing your return, and a case study of three Indian taxpayers who make three different choices.
- Explain how the old and new tax regimes differ in slabs, rebate and deductions
- Identify which deductions and exemptions you lose by choosing the new regime
- Calculate your tax under both regimes and compare them side by side
Practice Drills: Calculating Tax Liability Under Both Regimes
A hands-on practice course for salaried taxpayers who already know that India has two tax regimes and want to get fast and accurate at computing their actual liability under each one. Every lesson works through real salary scenarios, building from a single straightforward payslip to full side-by-side comparisons that account for deductions, exemptions, and the Section 87A rebate.
- How to gather the income, exemption, and deduction inputs you need before calculating either regime
- How to compute tax liability step by step under the old regime, including standard deduction, HRA, and Chapter VI-A deductions
- How to compute tax liability step by step under the new regime, including the current slabs and the Section 87A rebate
Practice Drills: Filling Out a Sample ITR Form
A hands-on walkthrough of filing your Income Tax Return in India, from gathering documents to e-verification. Built for salaried professionals and first-time filers who want to file their own ITR-1 correctly and confidently, without hiring a CA.
- Which documents you need before you start filing: Form 16, AIS, 26AS, bank interest certificates
- How to pick the right ITR form for your income type
- How to compare the old and new tax regimes and choose correctly
Practice Drills: Reconciling Form 26AS With Form 16
A practical, India-specific drill for salaried professionals and first-time taxpayers on reconciling Form 16 against Form 26AS before filing a return. Learn what each document actually shows, why TDS deducted by your employer can differ from TDS reflected against your PAN, and how to work through a line-by-line reconciliation using real Indian salary slip and Form 26AS examples. Cover downloading Form 26AS, AIS and TIS from the income tax e-filing portal, the most common causes of mismatch such as late TDS deposit, PAN errors and other deductors' entries, what to do when a mismatch turns up, and how to reconcile across multiple Form 16s after a job change.
- Read Form 26AS and Form 16 and know exactly what each one is telling you
- Explain why TDS in your Form 16 can differ from what shows against your PAN in Form 26AS
- Download Form 26AS, AIS and TIS from the income tax e-filing portal
Practice Drills: Structuring a Sample Salary for Tax Efficiency
A hands-on companion to Understanding Tax Implications of Salary Structuring. Instead of more theory, you work a single sample CTC of eighteen lakh rupees from raw numbers to a finished, tax-efficient structure: sorting every component into taxable, exempt or flexible, computing the HRA exemption step by step, building the full tax computation under both the old and new regimes, and reshuffling the structure using NPS, flexi-benefits and meal cards to see the take-home difference. Every drill uses real numbers you compute yourself, not a narrated case study, and the final lesson hands you a second CTC to structure on your own.
- Sort a full CTC into taxable, exempt and flexible components
- Calculate HRA exemption for a real salary figure step by step
- Build the tax computation under both the old and new regimes for the same CTC
Taxation and Regulatory Basics for Indian Investors
A practical, no-jargon guide to how India actually taxes and regulates your investments, built for first-time demat holders, salaried professionals, homemakers and retirees who want to understand their money, not just track it. Covers how capital gains on equity, mutual funds, debt funds, FDs and bonds are taxed, how dividends and TDS work, which ITR form and schedule to use for reporting gains, and the roles SEBI, the exchanges and the depositories play in protecting you. Uses real Indian numbers, forms and workflows throughout: Form 26AS, AIS, Schedule CG, SCORES, and current CBDT and SEBI rules.
- Understand how equity, debt funds and gold get taxed
- Learn to file your income tax return as an investor
- See how SEBI, exchanges and KYC rules protect you
Understanding Form 16, Form 26AS, and AIS
A plain-language, India-specific guide to the three documents every salaried professional and first-time taxpayer should check before filing an income tax return. Learn how your employer, bank, broker and mutual fund house report your income and tax to the Income Tax Department, and what Form 16, Form 26AS and the Annual Information Statement (AIS) each show. Read Part A and Part B of Form 16 line by line, see how the old and new tax regimes appear in it, and handle a job switch or a missing Form 16. Download and read Form 26AS, trace every TDS, TCS and advance tax credit, and fix missing TDS with the deductor. Use AIS and TIS to spot interest, dividends, share and mutual fund sales and high-value transactions, and submit feedback on wrong entries. Finish by reconciling all three documents against your pre-filled ITR, understanding mismatch notices, and following a case study of one Indian professional doing the full reconciliation.
- Explain what Form 16, Form 26AS and AIS are, who issues each and when
- Read Part A and Part B of Form 16 and check your salary, exemptions and deductions
- Download Form 26AS and verify every TDS, TCS and advance tax credit against your records
Understanding House Rent Allowance (HRA) Tax Exemption
A practical, India-specific guide to the House Rent Allowance exemption, built for salaried professionals, first-time taxpayers and anyone starting their financial planning. Understand what HRA is, why it appears in your salary slip, who can claim the exemption and how it works under the Income-tax Act, 2025. Master the three-limit rule, learn what counts as salary for HRA, how the metro and non-metro percentages apply and how to handle rent changes, city moves and job switches during the year. Work through special situations such as paying rent to your parents, claiming HRA alongside a home loan, shared flats and claiming rent under Section 80GG when your salary has no HRA. Get your rent receipts, rent agreement and landlord PAN in order, declare rent to your employer, claim a missed exemption while filing your ITR and meet your TDS duties on high rent. Finish with the most common HRA mistakes that trigger tax notices and a case study of one Indian professional working out HRA across a mid-year move.
- Explain what HRA is and check whether you are eligible to claim the exemption
- Calculate the exempt portion of HRA using the three-limit rule
- Apply the correct salary definition and metro or non-metro percentage
Understanding Section 80C and Common Tax Saving Investments
A practical, India-specific guide to Section 80C and the most common tax saving investments, built for salaried professionals, first-time taxpayers and anyone starting their financial planning. Understand what Section 80C is, who can claim it, why it only works under the old tax regime, and how the Rs 1.5 lakh limit translates into actual tax saved at each slab. Work through every major 80C option, from PPF, EPF, VPF, NSC, tax-saver FDs, Sukanya Samriddhi Yojana and SCSS to ELSS mutual funds, NPS and life insurance, along with expenses like tuition fees and home loan principal that also qualify. Compare lock-ins, returns, risk and tax treatment side by side, look beyond 80C at deductions such as 80CCD(1B) and 80D, and finish by learning how to declare investments to your employer, avoid the classic March rush mistakes, and build an 80C plan through a case study of three Indian taxpayers.
- Explain how Section 80C reduces taxable income and who is eligible to claim it
- Calculate the actual tax saved from 80C investments at your tax slab
- Compare PPF, EPF, ELSS, NPS, NSC, tax-saver FDs and other 80C options
Understanding TDS: Tax Deducted at Source Explained
A plain-language, India-specific guide to Tax Deducted at Source for salaried professionals, first-time taxpayers and anyone starting their financial planning. Understand why TDS exists, how money flows from the deductor to the government and back to you as a tax credit, and what the Income-tax Act, 2025 and the new tax year change. See how your employer calculates TDS on salary every month, how investment declarations and your regime choice affect it, and how to avoid short deduction after a job switch. Learn the TDS rules on FD interest, dividends, EPF withdrawals, rent, freelance fees, property purchases, crypto and online gaming winnings. Use Form 15G and 15H, keep your PAN operative and apply for lower deduction certificates to stop excess TDS legally. Finish by checking credits in Form 26AS and AIS, claiming TDS and refunds in your ITR, fixing deductor errors, telling TDS apart from TCS, and following a case study of one Indian professional tracking TDS across a full tax year.
- Explain what TDS is, who deducts it and how it becomes a credit against your final tax
- Work out how your employer calculates monthly TDS on salary under either regime
- Identify the TDS rates and thresholds on interest, dividends, rent, fees, property and winnings
Understanding Tax Implications of Salary Structuring
A practical, India-specific guide to how your salary structure decides how much tax you pay, built for salaried professionals, first-time taxpayers and anyone starting their financial planning. Learn why your CTC is not your take-home pay, what basic pay, HRA, special allowance, bonus and employer contributions to PF, NPS and gratuity really mean, and how the new Labour Codes and their 50% wage rule reshape salary structures. Understand which components are fully taxable, partly exempt or fully exempt, work through the HRA exemption calculation, and see how allowances, reimbursements and perquisites like a company car or rent-free housing are taxed under the Income-tax Act, 2025. Discover why structuring matters less in the new tax regime and where it still counts, from employer NPS to the retirement contribution cap. Finish by taking apart a real salary breakup, using flexi benefit plans, negotiating a tax-efficient offer, avoiding common mistakes and following a case study of three salary structures with three different take-home outcomes.
- Break down a CTC into gross salary, deductions and in-hand pay
- Explain how each salary component is taxed under the Income-tax Act, 2025
- Calculate your HRA exemption and the taxable value of common perquisites
Understanding the Indian Income Tax Slab System
A clear, India-specific guide to how the income tax slab system actually works, built for salaried professionals, first-time taxpayers and anyone starting their financial planning. Understand progressive taxation, the tax year, residential status and how gross income becomes taxable income before any slab is applied. Walk through every rate band in the new and old regimes, the higher exemption limits for senior citizens, and the crucial difference between your marginal rate and your effective rate. Learn what sits on top of the slabs: the rebate that makes income up to 12 lakh tax-free under the new regime, marginal relief near the threshold, surcharge for high earners and the 4% health and education cess. See which incomes, like capital gains and lottery winnings, are taxed outside the slabs, then compute tax on a real salary from start to finish, bust the most common slab myths and finish with a case study of four Indian taxpayers.
- Explain how progressive slab taxation works and why only the income inside each band is taxed at that band's rate
- Apply the new and old regime slabs, including the age-based limits for senior citizens
- Distinguish your marginal tax rate from your effective tax rate
Using ClearTax for Tax Filing and Planning
A hands-on, screen-by-screen guide to filing your Income Tax Return and planning your taxes using ClearTax, built for salaried professionals, first-time taxpayers and anyone starting their financial planning journey. This course assumes you already know the basics of ITR filing and focuses entirely on the ClearTax platform itself: setting up your account and picking the right plan, letting ClearTax auto-read your Form 16, reviewing and correcting pre-filled income and deductions, comparing the old and new tax regimes with ClearTax's calculator, importing capital gains from your broker and mutual fund statements, e-verifying your return, and using ClearTax's planning tools for tax-saving investments and advance tax. Real Indian screens, forms and numbers throughout.
Using EPFO's Portal to Track Provident Fund Contributions
A practical, India-specific walkthrough of the EPFO member portal for salaried professionals who want to see exactly where their provident fund money goes. Understand what EPF is, how your Universal Account Number (UAN) ties your job history together, and how the 12% employee and 12% employer contribution actually splits between EPF and EPS. Activate your UAN, log into the EPFO e-Sewa portal, and link Aadhaar, PAN and your bank account for KYC. Download your EPF passbook, read it line by line, understand how interest is credited and why the wage ceiling can make your numbers look smaller than expected, and learn what to do when an employer's contribution is missing or delayed.
- Explain what EPF is and how the employee and employer contributions are split between EPF and EPS
- Activate a UAN and understand why it is the single identifier across every employer
- Log into the EPFO e-Sewa member portal and link Aadhaar, PAN and bank details for KYC
Using Excel to Build a Personal Tax Saving Tracker
A hands-on course for salaried professionals and first-time taxpayers who want a spreadsheet that actually tells them where they stand. You will build a working Excel or Google Sheets tracker from scratch: income and deduction inputs, an old-regime versus new-regime tax calculator, and a dashboard that shows how much more you can invest before the financial year closes.
- How to decide between the old and new tax regimes for your own income
- How to structure an Excel sheet to capture salary, HRA, and other income cleanly
- How to track Section 80C, 80D, and other deductions without missing anything
Using Form 26AS and AIS to Verify Tax Credits
A hands-on guide to Form 26AS, AIS and TIS for salaried professionals and first-time taxpayers who want to confirm their tax credits before they file. Walks through downloading each document from the income tax e-filing and compliance portals, reading every section without confusion, and catching mismatches between what your employer or bank reported and what actually reflects in your account. Built around real Indian workflows: TRACES, the e-filing portal, AIS/TIS categories, and the entries that most often go unclaimed or unmatched.
- What Form 26AS, AIS and TIS each track, and how they differ from one another
- How to download Form 26AS and AIS/TIS from the income tax portals
- How to read every part of Form 26AS without missing a TDS or TCS entry
Using the Income Tax Portal for Filing ITR
A hands-on, practical guide to the Income Tax Department's e-filing portal (incometax.gov.in) for salaried, first-time filers. This course walks through the portal itself, screen by screen, from creating your account to submitting and e-verifying your return, tracking your refund, and downloading your filed ITR later. It focuses on how to operate the portal correctly and confidently, not on tax theory or planning.
- How to register on and log in to the Income Tax e-filing portal
- How to navigate the portal's dashboard, services and document library
- Where to find your pre-filled data (Form 26AS, AIS, TIS) on the portal
Forensic Accounting & Compliance
2 courses
Case Study: A Basic Introduction to the Punjab National Bank Fraud Case
A ground-up walkthrough of India's biggest banking fraud, the roughly 14,000 crore rupee Punjab National Bank scam uncovered in 2018. Meet the people involved, Nirav Modi, Mehul Choksi and the PNB branch officials who enabled them, and understand the two banking tools at the centre of it, Letters of Undertaking and the SWIFT messaging system, and how they were misused for years without showing up in the bank's own core systems. Walk through how the fraud was finally discovered, what RBI, the CBI and the ED did afterwards, and what the case teaches about internal controls, reconciliation and compliance culture in Indian banking.
Case Study: Adani Group Stock Volatility and Governance Concerns
A ground up case study on the Adani Group Hindenburg episode, covering promoter holding, share pledging, related party transactions, short selling mechanics, circuit limits, index concentration risk, SEBI's investigation, and a practical governance checklist every Indian retail investor can run on screener.in.
- Trace the Adani Group's story before the Hindenburg report
- Understand the crash and the governance concerns it raised
- Apply these lessons to your own investing decisions
Fintech Careers
1 course
Case Study: A Day in the Life of a Product Manager at a Fintech Startup
A narrative, case-study driven walk through a week in the life of a product manager at an Indian fintech startup. Instead of abstract theory, you follow one PM through stand-ups, a live UPI failure, prioritization calls, and a compliance-gated launch to see what the job is actually made of, and whether it is a career worth chasing.
- What a fintech PM actually does day to day, and how the role differs from a Product Owner or Business Analyst
- How to triage a live production issue and frame it as a clear problem statement
- How prioritization frameworks like RICE and MoSCoW get used (and abused) under real deadline pressure