TOKYO/BENGALURU -- Sonam Srivastava used to create trading algorithms for high-frequency securities traders. But when the U.S. advisory she worked for scrapped plans to launch in India, she decided to start her own advisory business in Mumbai. In 2019, she began offering stock portfolio recommendations on a site called Smallcase, which executes trades on investors' behalf.
Srivastava's recommendations became popular among retail investors during the COVID-19 pandemic. Starting with a "multifactor" strategy based on quantitative research, she has added new themes such as "momentum," which aims to take advantage of a bull market, and another focused on small-cap stocks.
