Rujul's Portfolio

Building a one-stop trading terminal for F&O

Until 2022, Groww was mostly an investor focused app, very new to trading. By 2023-24, we set out to tackle mounting problems our traders faced. This study is a culmination of those problem statements and what emerged of it - trading terminal, a re-imagined navigation made only for our traders, on both app and web.

Timeline

Jan '23 - June '24

The team

1 PM, 1 Researcher, 1 Designer

My role

Responsible for research, solutions & interactions

Introduction

This is how they trade

After thorough analyses, which good traders take years to perfect, you speculate an outcome - 'I believe Reliance will reach ₹2,000 in next few hours'. You take this trade, wait for it to reach this target and exit.

12:00

01:00

27 Aug

02:00

03:00

13:00

Speculate

Study historical trends, watch news, observe charts & predict what might happen

"I think Reliance will reach 2000 in next few hours"

Enter the market

Once your target is set, you wait for the right price and buy or sell depending on your strategy

"Let me wait till Reliance drops to 1500, I will buy it then"

NIFTY 21 Mar 21750 Call

-₹200.00

BANKNIFTY 21 Mar 21750 Call

+₹510.00

+₹110.00

FINNIFTY 21 Mar 21750 Call

-₹200.00

Monitor trades

Unlike investment, trades are short-lived. You watch ongoing bets & wait for them to reach your targets

"My prediction is correct. I think the prices will continue to rise"

Exit

You can choose to exit any time. Mostly when your target is reached or to cut down further losses.

"Reliance is now at 2000, seems like a good time to exit"

Speculate

Speculating prices is all about spotting patterns. Traders build a mental map of market influences on a daily basis—news, events, historical analysis etc. But during trading hours, they lock onto one crucial tool: technical charts.

Just an idea of what goes on in a trader's mind to speculate from charts:

"If new candles break this resistance level, there could be a rally. I can take a trade at this point"

"Let me check RSI indicator. Is it in the overbought zone?"

"15 min candles indicate upward trend. What about 5 min candle?"

15 min

Indicators

Reliance

₹1,500 +12.15%

"This seems to be a strong support level, this can be my stop-loss"

"Market gave a huge upward rally in the last few hours"

"Based on my analysis, Reliance will can go upto ₹2,000 in next few hours"

A trader's mind while observing charts

Enter the market

Once you have made up your mind, you can trade a stock directly or choose it's derivative, futures & options. This is how options work:

As per above example, say Reliance is currently at ₹1,500. Assuming today's date is 1st September, what do you think will happen to it's price in the future, say 7th Sep? - Based on this, there are two types of options:

Call option

"I believe it will go up"

A 'choice' to buy Reliance at ₹2000 on 7th Sep. On 7th Sep if Reliance > ₹2000, then profit!

Put option

"I believe it will go down"

A 'choice' to sell Reliance at ₹1000 on 7 Sep. On 7 Sep if Reliance < ₹1000, then profit!

Option chain is a tool for picking these options

Monitor trades

Since trades are short-lived than your normal long-term investments, they are called 'positions' once you enter the market. It's just a list of your trades where you can see current profit/loss. You can choose to modify or exit based on current market movements on charts.

12:30

F&O

Positions

NIFTY 23,000 +230 (0.9%)

•

BANKNIFTY 23,000 +230 (0.9%)

•

FINNIFTY 23,000 +230 (0.9%)

Stocks

F&O

Mutual funds

Loans

Exit

You exit trade either once your target is reached if your prediction was correct or to cut down losses if your prediction was wrong. Few traders also use features like stop-loss and target to auto-exit when either a loss or a profit value is reached.

NIFTY 16 Dec 24000 Call

₹320.00 (+5.00%)

Qty NSE

100

Price Limit

2000

Balance : ₹50,000

Required

: ₹5,000

Exit

The problem

We're not built for traders?

While Groww offers a user-friendly platform suitable for beginners, it may not fully satisfy the needs of more advanced traders

~ summary from 16 citations across subreddits like r/IndianStreetBets

They felt Groww is only for beginners, but why?

By 2022, this was one of the top comments across social media, live events and research surveys. To investigate, we started visiting traders in their homes, calling them to our offices and studying their journeys in live trading scenarios.

As we investigated, key issues emerged

Lack of features

For a small, high-quality group of seasoned traders. But for general traders, an insight emerged.

Tech issues

Down-times which led to serious losses in past. Reliability has since then become a top priority for tech

₹20

per executed order

High brokerage fees

This was a more serious problem for traders especially, since they place most orders per day.

The insight

A common reason cited by our users was that other apps are more trader focused in terms of features. However, the features most of them mentioned, were already present on Groww.

The discovery

Our navigation failed to prioritise traders

Though we lacked tools for a very nuanced set of traders, for most of them, a perception problem seemed to emerge due to few issues:

Since we began with a long-term investor mindset, our journeys revolved around them, not traders.
Traders found it increasingly difficult to find and toggle between crucial properties like charts, positions, option chain, when speed was of utmost priority.
General brand perception and arrangement of key tools made it feel like traders are an after-thought for Groww.

The plan

Solving navigation for traders

To tackle this over-arching perception issue, we started tracks dedicated to reliability, advance feature building etc. One of the key tracks was solving navigation for traders, on both platforms:

2023

Solving web navigation

Building a one-stop trading hub on web which went on to attract 40k DAU within weeks.

2024

Solving app navigation

A complete re-haul of navigation, a ground up re-building of a core feature & a permanent home for F&O

Project I

Solving web navigation

We started looking at web journeys first by 2022. Web is more of an experimental zone for us and we try to launch and test things here before pushing them out on app. Here's how web looked like currently:

current web navigation & charts

The problem

Traders had a tough time navigating, relied on multi-tabs

Most traders complained about our web being slow. We found out a common pattern:

They had to open multiple Groww tabs and dabbled between them especially during trading hours.
They either missed context while doing this or missed latest movements in the market

Very few traders could actually afford multi-screens. Rest had to rely on multi-tabs

Expected journey

We were built for a linear journey of events

Speculate

analyze on charts

check market movement

Enter the market

select contracts on option chain

buy/sell contracts on order card

Monitor & exit trades

monitor trades on positions

Actual journey

Theirs was circular, revolving technical charts

check charts of multiple indices

enter trade as per signal on charts

exit trade as per signal on charts

select contracts after indication on charts

But why was this so?

Technical charts helped them with crucial information at every stage of their journey.

Pre-trade: Observing current movement of market, candle by candle, second by second to decide when and what to trade.
During trade: Monitor positions, check right signal on charts to exit
Post-trade: Wait for new signal to take entry

How might we build a trader journey around charts?

Towards a new look

First we found out our overall numbers and saw that there was heavy demand for trading view charts than chart IQ. Plus our integration was a very poor design. We took this chance to switch to a new charting platform altogether and took care of UI modifications along the way, to make it look more Groww

Introducing, web terminal

The structure

Charts in focus, everything else around it.

Never miss a single tick from charts while surfing opportunities to trade, ordering or taking positions.

analyse charts

Customizable spot for market indices

Trader-focused properties on side-panel

Example 1

Order from charts

More than 80% of our users either plan strategy on the chart, use indicators or use support & resistance levels to select these contracts. Selecting and buying now becomes a breeze and a task of seconds.

Example 2

Monitor positions

Track positions seamlessly while watching candle movements. Exit precisely when the price hits your target.

Impact

80% of web F&O DTU are now charts DAU.
Order sources shifted from web pages to terminal tabs, ~32% increase in 4 months, as we increased roll-out percent.

order contributing sources

Web terminal as of present attracts a DAU of ~75k traders.
Check live version here.

Project II

Solving app navigation

traders demonstrating their current app journeys

current journey to reach charts

Traders had a tough time navigating

Finding and toggling between trading tools like option chain, positions, charts was nested and difficult. Made it feel like traders are low priority.

Expected journey

On app too, we were built for a linear journey of events

Speculate

analyse on charts

check market movement

Enter the market

select contracts on option chain

buy/sell contracts on order card

Monitor & exit trades

monitor trades on positions

Actual journey

While theirs was circular, revolving charts

check charts of multiple indices

select contracts after indication on charts

exit trade as per signal on charts

enter trade as per signal on charts

But this was a bigger challenge than web

Our app had 10 times more traders than web.
Web traders could at least rely on multi-tabs to solve a few problems, app traders did not have this luxury
It is a challenge to mimic a parallel tasking platform on app, due to lack of real estate

It was thus important to study & prioritize journeys to be solved here.

Prioritizing journeys as per trader types

F&O trader cohort was mainly divided into two types:

Scalpers

They enter and exit within a few seconds and capitalise on smaller chart movements. Charts and speed is of utmost priority.

Strategy makers

They buy and sell multiple contracts at once as per a particular strategy. Charts and speed is of lesser priority.

Since speed on charts was a major priority for them, I studied their journeys and focused on their issues:

Problem I

Executing trades from charts was slow, due to two journeys

chart <-> chain journey

Once traders spot an opportunity on charts, they had to navigate out of charts to reach option chain, where they took trades.

"Once I spot an opportunity on charts, I want to trade immediately"

chart <-> position journey

Once traders take a trade, they had to go all the out of charts on the home-screen to monitor their profit/loss.

"I need to exit immediately when the chart tells me else I risk losing heavy money"

Solution

Introducing quick access

Stay on charts, one click access to position and option chain.

Recorded on prod version, built on Trading-View charts

Problem II

95% of traders traded in a fixed set of charts, accessing them was slow

Toggling between charts was a hassle

There are only 6 trade-able indices, in which 90% of them traded. Rest of them had a favorite set of stock or contract charts

"I checked NIFTY 50 chart, don't want to trade in this today. How is BankNity doing?"

Solution

A panel for most used charts

Quickly toggle between 5 index charts which attract 90% of F&O trades.

Recorded on prod version, built on Trading-View charts

Experiment impact & evolution

Over a short span of 3 weeks,

Average time spent on charts increased by 30%
Charts as an overall order contributing source increased by 14%

By Feb 2024, I started working on Groww's new ground-up building of their own charts. While working on that, I revamped these interventions into an end-to-end terminal experience, specially for Groww charts.

Introducing, app terminal

Few months after testing quick access, I tweaked it into a bottom-nav interface for a stronger identity. Currently in beta.