Priyanka Ranjan and Harshit Khandelwal leave high-paying careers to develop PiTrade, a platform aiming to democratise structured investing by focusing on individual goals and transparent portfolio sharing.
Priyanka Ranjan and Harshit Khandelwal have given up the sort of careers many people would view as the end goal. Ranjan worked in quantitative strategy at Goldman Sachs and J.P. Morgan, while Khandelwal spent years building large-scale systems at Amazon. Yet the pair chose to leave that security behind to build PiTrade, a fintech start-up aimed at making retail investing more structured and less dependent on guesswork.
Their decision came with a steep personal cost. The founders have said they walked away from roughly $700,000 in combined annual pay, along with the status that comes with senior roles at major firms. But that sacrifice also sharpened the focus of the business. Ranjan has argued that the pressure of founding a company can force faster decisions and clearer priorities, a discipline she believes investors need as much as entrepreneurs do.
PiTrade is built around goals rather than individual stock picks. Instead of asking users to chase tickers, the platform asks what the money is for, whether that is retirement, a child’s education, a home purchase or a trip. Each goal is treated as a separate portfolio, with its own risk profile and time horizon. Goldman Sachs Asset Management says its quantitative investing teams use large datasets and systematic methods to tailor portfolios to different risk and return needs, and PiTrade is seeking to translate that sort of framework into a form retail investors can use more easily.
The company also tries to remove one of the more awkward features of social investing: the hidden price gap that can emerge when one investor copies another. PiTrade lets users share portfolios so others can follow them in real time, with the stated aim of making the process more transparent and fair. That emphasis on accessibility and timing appears central to the founders’ pitch that retail investors should not have to navigate risk and exit decisions without a clear framework.
PiTrade’s credibility was helped by an early encounter with Tim Draper’s investment network. According to the company, the founders were first noticed during an AWS pitch competition, which led to an invitation to Draper University’s Hero Training Programme in San Mateo, California. The programme brought together 60 founders from 19 countries for five weeks, and the company says the experience helped refine its business model and technical approach before DraperU Ventures invested.
The founders say collaboration has been as important as outside capital. PiTrade initially met scepticism from one major trade-signal provider, but the company says that turned into support after it demonstrated its security, speed and reliability. Another backer came in the form of Rob Isbitts, a veteran risk manager who later integrated his ROAR risk-scoring framework into the platform. Inside the business, the division of labour is clear: Khandelwal leads product and technology, while Ranjan handles customers, traders, investors, marketing and operations. That split has helped the company move quickly through development and, it says, through the Securities and Exchange Commission registration process as well.
Disclaimer: This article is intended to inform and educate, not to recommend or endorse any financial product, investment or strategy. Please consider your own financial circumstances and seek professional advice where appropriate before making financial decisions.
