pakistan 
A startup based out of Pakistan, KTrade manages to get investment of $4.5 million in a funding program organised by Hong Kong based investment firm TTB Partners and New York based global VC HOF capital.
The stock brokerage firm KASB securities is the one that owns as well as operates stocks of the trading application. This is a huge investment for the Karachi based business especially given the recent developments with regards to the app.
The funding program included some big names from the world including that of the fintech investor Christian Angermayer. Pakistani business families also joined the funding round along with David Mortlock, who is the managing partner at an investment bank in Germany.
With the stock brokerage firm now stepping into the retail sector, KASB relaunched itself in 2018 with the help of investment executive Ali Farid and started to focus on retail investing. The company then launched the KTrade application and now it is one of the applications with the most users in the country.
The users can sign into the application with as little as PKR 5,000 and start trading for many companies. KTrade charges a mere amount of PKR 0.03 for the stocks priced at PKR 20 or less and 0.15 for the stock prices that are above 20. As per the website of the company, KTrade takes the least commission when compared to all the other reading apps in the country.
The app currently has over 200,000 users who are registered for the purpose of research and trading. Among these users, many use the application to trade stocks. The chairman of the company, Ali Farid talked to the media as he expressed his happiness on the company winning the huge amount of money.
A website highlights that more than 50 percent of the trading rush considering the brokerage value comes from the application itself. However, it was not always the case. Since the company entered retail trading, it has been a different ball game for the investors. KASB also caters to the corporate as well as individual clients through a number of options available on its website and app.
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Since the second half of 2020, it has become easier for people to trade stocks in the country. This is after guidelines were changed a little by the Securities & Exchange Commission of Pakistan, a financial regulatory agency in Pakistan.
Most people in Pakistan lack access to formal financial products and their savings in real estate or gold offer inferior returns, are inefficient and have high transaction costs, asserted the chairman of the company. He also added that through this,, the company aims to ease the access to capital markets.
Investing is on a rise in the country. Stock trading platforms like Robinhood, Zerodha, Flatex among others make sure that they give users friendly and easy access to the trading and KTrade aims to do the same.
