It was at a dinner-table party during the Coronavirus-induced lockdown with her ‘well settled’ and accomplished girlfriends that Sayali Rai realised that most women were not in control of their own finances. “There was a lawyer, surgeon, head of an advertising agency—and in every case, their finances were handled by either their fathers, husbands or father-in-laws. That didn’t go down well with me,” says Rai. In response, she got in touch with her childhood friend, Niyati Thaker, and started FinCocktail in August 2020. While Rai has a BSc in finance from the Stern School of Business in New York, and an MBA in finance from Babson College and has also worked with Citibank as an investment banker, Thaker is a graduate of Kingston University in London and has completed her three levels of CFA (Chartered Financial Analyst) and London, and was previously employed with ASK Wealth Advisors. So, when they give you advice on how to embrace your personal finance, you take it seriously. “The aim is to make finance less complicated. We are focused on both content creation and education. The end goal is to make the person capable of making their own financial decisions. This is imperative, as right now, India is primed for investment,” says Rai. 

The last few months have experienced an economic turnaround. Despite  the COVID-19 scare, stock markets have been on an upward trend, after a major slump last year. On September 24, the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) Sensex touched 60,000 points—a new high and yet another exhilarating moment for the Indian stock markets. In May, India’s $2.9 trillion stock market has been buoyed in part by resilient demand from international investors, who’ve purchased a net $34.9 billion of shares over the past year. Indian companies have taken advantage of this rise and raised about $4 billion via public offerings since the start of the year, on track for the busiest first-half since 2017, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Sunil Khaitan, India head of global capital markets at Bank of America, was quoted as saying that he expects Indian IPO volumes to more than double in 2021 from the previous year.