Know All About Zero1: A New Age Financial Venture By Zerodha & LearnApp

A casual conversation between LearnApp founders & CEO Prateek Singh & Swathi Sharma, and Nithin Kamath, co-founder of Zerodha seeded the idea of creating a financial venture: “Zero1 by Zerodha.” Let’s explore more about what Zero1 has to offer with inputs from co-founder and CEO Prateek Singh himself!

What Is Zero1?

Zero1 by Zerodha is an educational initiative that offers content on money action, multi-timeframe analysis, and algorithmic trading in Python, catering to a high-demand topic in the trading industry.

Prateek states, “Nothing prepares us to handle money. Not college, not school, talking to our parents doesn’t help and our office doesn’t guide us either. Enter Zero1. We here are creating a safe space for money conversations.” Zero1 can answer:

• Job questions around money – CTC v/s In-hand salaries or how to negotiate salaries.
  
• Career questions around money – Should I get an MBA? Or Should I study abroad and get a job or stay in India?
  
• Buying decision questions – Can I afford an SUV? Or How to buy a house
  
• Investing questions – What’s the best way to start investing? How do mutual funds work?

What Zero1 Has To Offer:

They run different shows, each trying to solve a problem society is facing today.

De-influencing 

In this series, Zero1 picks popular notions of making money and explores if it’s possible or not. In finance, a lot of small and medium-sized influencers talk about financial products that result in viewers losing money. We explain the good and the bad of popular notions of making money. 

Money Psychology

In this series, the experts dive into the psychology behind personal finance to help you make better financial decisions. Right from buying your first phone, laptop or even your first investment.

Girl Boss

With Girl Boss, Zero1 brings the journey of successful women and their relationship with money to the forefront along with Sahiba Bali.

The How

In this series with Shreyans Jain, they explore alternative careers like art with Rob (remember from Pogo and M.A.D.?) and Chef Vicky Ratnani on how to become a Chef.

The Perspective

Here, two middle-aged men talk about their perspective on the Snake oil salesman, IPOs, Electric Vehicles, Genetically Modified Crops, Fast fashion, and more.

Zero1 has also launched a YouTube channel. Their content is a fun take on financial lessons while educating people about the importance of money management. The channel is built under the partnership of LearnApp, a collaborator of Zerodha for many years now.

What’s LearnApp All About? Meet the Minds Behind It!

LearnApp’s mission is to spread financial literacy. It started in 2018 with video courses featuring industry leaders. LearnApp later added live classes in cohort-based programmes in 2022. The institute was founded by Prateek Singh, who started his financial and investment journey at the age of 17!

LearnApp’s co-founder Swati Sharma is not just his business partner, but his life partner too. Ankush Oberoi who has been friends with them for 15+ years now, is also the co-founder of LearnApp. “All three of us have been able to stick together and that’s our edge,” said Singh.

Today it’s a technology provider to businesses that want to stream live classes to users. It’s developed a LIVE interactive format where upto 1,000 people can interact with charts, balance sheets, SIP calculators and over 100 formats while a mentor teaches them live.

This enables users to LEARN BY DOING and not just listen to a class. This service is being used by Varsity Live and a few colleges too. Through such partnerships, LearnApp reaches over millions of people a year.

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Did you know how the Zero1 project started and how it is making waves in such a short span? We’ve got you covered! Here are some of the questions that we asked Zero1’s co-founder and CEO Prateek Singh:

How did you get the idea to create Zero1 in collaboration with Zerodha?

This was over a casual conversation sometime back. The idea developed slowly because we felt there is no dedicated financial media network that exists. An agendaless channel that creates only what the viewers want. No sponsorship, no ads, only good content.

How does Zero1 utilize data to provide accurate and insightful financial information?

Every episode goes through thorough research and we believe in data-backed insights. We try our best to reference and tell stories from data.

What makes Zero1 different from other financial media networks?

We don’t chase views, internally we do not have any view KPI. We focus on quality and what the audience wants. We are building this like a product, where a team listens to users, and we test content, iterate, and have analytic meetings to continuously improve. Most financial channels out there focus on the number of content pieces and not the quality of research, storytelling and production value.

We do not recommend stocks, mutual funds or any kind of financial product. We talk about how these products work but don’t talk about specific providers. We do try to make financial concepts light and easy to understand, like this video where we explain how tax works. I am sure you’ll find it interesting:

Zero1 Educates Through Various Mediums

Launched in October 2023, Zero1 started by curating content and debunking financial myths on their YouTube channel, gaining significant recognition in no time. On March 16th 2024, they announced “World’s First Festival Around Money & Wealth“. It included money games, super fun crowd interactions and teaching about money and wealth management in the most unique ways one can imagine!

The Zero1 Fest

Zero1 is known for being a prominent stock market YouTube channel, so why would they choose to hold a festival? Founder and CEO Prateek Singh has the answer! “We are here to make finance a part of pop culture, we are here to demystify money. And what’s a better way to bring everyone together in a single place, with all finance nerds can learn about money and meet, greet, and have fun all at once!“

Interestingly, the passes for the Festival were free but people had to pass a ‘mission’ to ‘earn’ the pass. Over 10,000 people passed the mission and only 800 people earned the pass. Each pass allowed them to bring a +1 making the event attendees to 1,800. This method enabled only finance nerds to enter the event, helping build a unique community.

The festival by Zero1 featured various activities like workshops, experience zones, musical performances, panel discussions on debunking myths about money with India’s leading content creators and more. The guest of honour list was quite familiar, which included Nikhil Kamath, Tanmay Bhat, Lisa Mishra, Nas Daily, Harun Robert a.k.a Rob, Oaff, DIVINE, street culture king Vedant Lamba, MD & CEO of Edelweiss Mutual Fund – Radhika Gupta (Shark Tank fame) and more.

Hopping On To The Podcast Realm!

In the sea, where almost every content creator is sailing on the “podcasting” boat, Zero1 stands out! But why podcast? According to their data analysis, all the metrics were fine, but the one thing that triggered was the gender ratio. It was noted that very few women care about money management.

Co-founder Swathi Sharma stated, “The possibility of women ratio being low could be because women aren’t expected to take control of their MONEY.” And that’s when it hit them to start a new podcast channel called “Girl Boss.” It is a women-centric podcast where they interview 11 prominent and established women on social media and know about their difficulties in money management then vs. now.

Girl Boss

Zero1 released the first ‘Girl Boss‘ episode on June 25th 2024, featuring the very talented actor, comedian, and content creator, Mallika Dua. Mallika spills the tea on her hefty penalty payments, viral videos, corporate life, negotiation skills, and so much more with content creator and host of the show, Sahiba Bali.

Zero1 is already on a revolutionary journey and a mission for transforming financial education with engaging, innovative content, making learning accessible and exciting for everyone. They are looking to partner with more people and produce more shows. Stay tuned for more such content!