Mochatrade raises $5.5 million to bring US stock trading closer to Indian traders

Kolkata: Mochatrade, a trading platform targeting Indian users seeking exposure to US markets, has raised $5.5 million in funding led by CoinFund, with participation from Coinbase Ventures and Zero Knowledge Ventures, as it looks to simplify access to trading linked to US stocks such as Nvidia and Tesla.

The company, which counts Y Combinator and Pioneer Fund among its earlier backers, is building a platform that allows Indian traders to take positions on US stock prices without opening a US brokerage account. Unlike conventional investing products that focus on buying and holding shares, Mochatrade offers perpetual futures contracts linked to US company prices, allowing users to bet on both rising and falling prices.

The platform allows users to fund their accounts through UPI and view margins, profits and losses in rupees, reducing the friction associated with overseas transfers, dollar balances and currency conversions. The contracts have no fixed expiry, and users do not own the underlying shares. Trading with leverage can magnify both gains and losses.


“India traded $1.9 trillion in options premium turnover last year. The appetite to trade is already here. But when Indians want to trade the US market, the product still feels foreign,” said Utkarsh Sinha, co-founder and CEO of Mochatrade. “We are building Mochatrade so an Indian trader can fund with UPI, see P&L in rupees, and know exactly what to do.”

The company plans to use the fresh capital to strengthen its trading engine and risk infrastructure and expand its reach among active Indian traders. Its business model is based on trading fees. It also plans to introduce contracts linked to select pre-IPO companies, US stock options and social trading features, subject to applicable laws and regulatory approvals.

Mochatrade’s pitch rests on making overseas market exposure feel familiar to Indian users while building the payments, settlement and risk-management systems needed to support trading activity.

“Most US market products make Indians do extra work. Move money in an unfamiliar way. Think in dollars. Convert every gain or loss back into rupees. We want to change this,” said Chetan Manda, co-founder and chief product officer.

The company was founded by three IIT alumni who have known one another for a decade. Sinha previously built and scaled Martian Wallet to more than two million installs and $2 billion in transaction volume before its acquisition. Manda became Sprinklr’s youngest director of product in 2025, leading core AI initiatives for Fortune 500 brands. Co-founder and chief technology officer Parth Maheshwari was part of the team that built Photoshop on the web at Adobe before leading payments and credit infrastructure at Navi.

CoinFund managing partner, co-founder and chief investment officer Alex Felix said the company had focused on the local requirements of payments, compliance, banking and trader behaviour while building its platform.

“Their sequence is rarer than it sounds, and it is why we led this round,” Felix said.

Y Combinator group partner Nemil Dalal said the founders were addressing a market that had remained structurally underserved, backed by technical expertise and execution capabilities.

Through its Indian operating entity, Mochatrade is registered with the Financial Intelligence Unit-India (FIU-IND) as a Virtual Digital Asset Service Provider and reporting entity for anti-money-laundering purposes.

The registration relates to its obligations under the anti-money-laundering framework and should not be interpreted as regulatory approval of every trading product it offers or plans to launch.