TradeX Markets

A real-money gaming application that operates as a P2P trading platform, prediction market startup TradeX works as a new-gen stock exchange that lets people earn money for their opinions.

Where do you get your news from? Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or WhatsApp? Is the source credible?

The spread of misinformation across social media, especially post COVID-19, is a growing cause for concern.

According to the Global Survey report, 82% of the news in India is consumed through social media. A study, Prevalence and Source Analysis of COVID-19 Misinformation in 138 Countries, revealed that India produced the largest amount of misinformation (18.07%) among the countries surveyed.

This misinformation goes on to shape the perspective and behaviour of the masses.

Aware of this problem and keen to do their bit to resolve it, IIT Roorkee alumni Divij Goyal and Ankit Shrivastava started TradeX, a trading platform for future events, in January 2021. The app was also a part of Y Combinator’s Winter 2022 cohort.

A real-money gaming application that operates as a P2P trading platform, TradeX lets people trade on “opinions that matter to them” and “events that affect their daily life”, be it politics, COVID-19, Bollywood, or entertainment.

The prediction market startup works as a new-gen stock exchange, letting people use their opinions to earn money. For example, users can bet on ‘whether Joe Biden will complete his term as US president’ or Aamir Khan’s Lal Singh Chaddha will earn more than Rs 160 crore’.

“With wide social media penetration, misinformation, or lack of information, we end up with one-sided views,” said Divij Goyal after the startup raised $1 million in a seed round from TDV Partners, SoMa Capital, and marquee investors such as Maninder Gulati, Anupam Mittal, Rajesh Shawney, Hitesh Chawla, Cem Garih, Justin Mateen, Fethi, and a few others.

“With TradeX, people can know what people around them think. People use the app to form an opinion about any event and trade to get a financial incentive for that opinion,” the entrepreneur said.

“We realised that misinformation tends to spread quickly – from one person to social media and then across the world. So, we felt that there has to be a platform that shows the two sides of the picture, a clear picture of the world and what the world is thinking about,” Divij said.

TradeX’s idea is simple: it wants you to “take positions on future events, predict the outcome using data (graphs provided in the app), earn money, and learn something new”.