In 2011, while many of his third-year IIT Roorkee peers were preparing for plush tech jobs, Anshul Gupta found himself drawn towards finance — something far removed from his electrical engineering syllabus. Born and raised in a middle-class household in Dehradun, Gupta’s career initially had one simple goal: secure a stable, well-paying job that would improve the financial well-being of his family. “My interests in life were secondary at that point,” Gupta says.
Thus the placement season in his final year brought him to Oracle in Hyderabad as a coder. But a CFA Level 1 certificate and a growing fascination for capital markets soon nudged him out of that role. “My interest was in finance, so why was I wasting time coding?” he recalls. Over the next two years, Gupta completed all levels of the CFA, took the FRM Level 1, and landed at Deutsche Bank in structured finance – his first real taste of the sector.
A year later, he moved to IFMR Capital (now Northern Arc Capital), where he stayed for five years, eventually heading product development in structured finance. Here, Gupta was in the thick of debt-market innovations – executing India’s first covered bond transaction, the first revolving securitisation post-2012 RBI guidelines, and several other first-of-its-kind deals, many even trademarked by Northern Arc.
Transition from Wall Street to fintech innovation
“We were doing transactions worth Rs 25,000 crore over those years, but they were only accessible to large institutions and ultra-rich family offices,” he says.
“I thought all these products were good, but there was no access for retail investors,” he adds.
For a retail investor, Gupta saw only two extremes: the safe but low returns of fixed deposits (FDs), and the higher but volatile returns of equities. “There was nothing in between. Bonds and structured debt products could fill that gap, but they weren’t available easily to retail investors.”
In early 2020, a common lawyer friend connected him to Ajinkya Kulkarni, who was toying with a similar idea. Soon, the founding team – Gupta, Kulkarni, Abhik Patel (product), and Shashank Chimaladari (tech) – came together to launch Wint Wealth.
Their first offering, a securitisation product, proved too complex for retail investors. Within a month, they pivoted to corporate bonds, which were simpler to understand and offered 2-3% higher returns than FDs.
Regulatory hurdles and the Zerodha-backed growth engine
But soon the question arose: why would retail investors trust a new platform with their money? The solution was with Zerodha.
In January 2021, the discount broking major invested $2 million in Wint Wealth, which not just provided capital but also lent its credibility to the new platform. “Seeing the Zerodha name on our platform made people more comfortable,” Gupta recalls.
From there, growth was steady. By mid-2021, Wint Wealth had 5,000 users and a curated list of corporate bonds. But regulation fears loomed. While the bonds themselves were regulated, the act of selling them online wasn’t yet.
The team knew that to scale further, it was essential to be a regulated entity. So they started engaging with the regulators.
Gupta adds that fortunately, Sebi was also very interested in growing the space. “It’s been the vision of regulators that if India has to grow, the bond market has to be equally developed as the equity market. If not, capital formation can’t be efficient,” he says.
Finally, in 2022, Sebi introduced regulations for Online Bond Platform Providers (OBPPs), mandating that only listed bonds could be sold online, whose minimum investment threshold was lowered from Rs 10 lakh to Rs 1 lakh. But this was still higher than the minimum investment requirement of Rs 10,000 (for unlisted bonds), shrinking Wint’s potential customers.
“It was a setback during which we lost some users, but Sebi had a clear vision to eventually bring the minimum ticket size lower. We just had to be patient,” says Gupta.
That patience paid off in September 2024, when the minimum ticket size for listed bonds dropped to Rs 10,000. Overnight, monthly user acquisition jumped 15–20x, from 1,000 to over 15,000. Currently, Wint Wealth has more than 100,000 registered users.
The platform aims to attract first-time investors with low-ticket, relatively safe bonds, and then educate them about the asset and diversification. The average user now makes five–six transactions a year. About 98% of Wint’s revenue comes from corporate bonds, with a small number of users opting for FDs.
Gupta believes FDs will always have a place for emergency funds, but bonds are better for wealth-building. “In an FD, post-tax, you might make 4–5%. With long-term inflation in India at 5–6%, you’re losing money in real terms. With bonds, you can get 6–8% post-tax, which is a real positive return.”
Wint Wealth’s investor roster has grown beyond Zerodha to include 3One4 Capital, Arkham Ventures, Blume Ventures, and Eight Roads Ventures, the Indian arm of global investment firm Fidelity. The company is now well-capitalised but plans to raise more funds for expansion.
Looking back, Gupta says, “in fintech, you can’t be a cowboy. It’s better to be a conservative, work with the regulator, and never operate in the grey.”