Mochatrade raises $5.5 Mn to let Indian traders bet on US stocks in rupees

Mochatrade, a trading platform aimed at Indian users who want exposure to US markets, has raised $5.5 Mn in a seed round led by CoinFund, with Coinbase Ventures and Zero Knowledge Ventures taking part. Y Combinator and Pioneer Fund backed the company earlier. The Block, citing cofounder Chetan Manda, put total funding at $5.56 Mn, including a $690,000 pre-seed round, and said the money came in through post-money SAFEs rather than a priced round, so there is no valuation to report.

The product is not a brokerage. Users will trade perpetual futures, contracts with no expiry that track the price of US stocks such as Nvidia, Tesla and Apple, and can go long or short with leverage without owning the shares or opening a US account. Accounts are funded through UPI, and balances, margins and profit and loss are shown in rupees. Inc42 reports that the platform also plans contracts on crypto, commodities and indices, and later on select pre-IPO companies, US stock options and social trading, subject to regulatory approval.

Mochatrade was founded in 2026 by Utkarsh Sinha, Chetan Manda and Parth Maheshwari. Sinha previously cofounded the crypto wallet Martian, which Inc42 says reached more than 2 Mn installs and $2 Bn in transaction volume before it was acquired. Manda was a director of product at Sprinklr, and Maheshwari worked on Photoshop for the web at Adobe before leading payments and credit infrastructure at Navi.

The startup says its waitlist has passed 25,000 sign-ups, and Manda told The Block the platform is in beta with a public opening planned in the coming weeks. It will earn money from trading fees. According to The Economic Times, its Indian entity is registered with the Financial Intelligence Unit-India as a virtual digital asset service provider for anti-money-laundering purposes, which is a reporting obligation and not an approval of the products it offers.

The pitch lands as SEBI has tightened futures and options rules at home and as overseas investing by Indians grows. Inc42, citing RBI data, notes that residents remitted $2.65 Bn abroad for equity and debt investments in FY26, up from $1.51 Bn in FY24. Whether Mochatrade can turn waitlist interest into active, well-protected traders will depend on its risk controls and on how regulators view leveraged offshore-style contracts sold to Indian retail users.