Markets regulator SEBI on Thursday banned Pune-based 'finfluencer' Avadhut Sathe and his firm, the Avadhut Sathe Trading Academy (ASTAPL), from the securities market.
In a 125-page interim order cum show cause notice, SEBI also ordered them to return Rs 546 crore—out of the firm's total collection of more than Rs 601 crore from more than 3.37 lakh investors—that was "unlawfully gained".
What did Sathe do?
Despite growing up in a chawl (settlement) in Mumbai's Dadar area, Avadhut Sathe worked his way up the career ladder, becoming an IT professional abroad.
According to his website, Sathe was a longtime investor, but dedicated himself to it only after quitting the IT field in 2007. A year later, ASTAPL was born out of a small seminar session he conducted, quickly growing to 17 branches nationwide, as per an Indian Express report.
Often self-described as a financial influencer, Pune-based Avadhut Sathe's business model involved training retail investors in the art of stock market trading.
He offered his training programmes in Hindi, Marathi, and English, reaching even middle-class families and people from poorer backgrounds due to the competitive prices of his courses.
Over the years, he claimed to have trained thousands of people, and in 2023, Sathe went viral after a video of him dancing during a trading session did the rounds on social media, at which time, student testimonies of his courses also went viral.
The result was phenomenal: a YouTube channel with about 500,000 subscribers, marking a strong online presence and additional source of income for Sathe and his firm.
However, as SEBI has revealed, ASTAPL's advice was hollow—without registering itself with the markets regulator as an investment adviser or research analyst, ASTAPL allegedly offered course takers stock-specific recommendations and trade levels.
SEBI has also accused Sathe and his firm of spreading misinformation through social media, as ASTAPL would only publish testimonies of successful trading results.
However, this is not the first time that ASTAPL and Sathe have come under SEBI's lens—the two entities were warned in 2024 against spreading half-truths about stock market success, after SEBI's own study showed that most small traders usually face net losses in trading.
