Introducing Varsity Junior
While continuing to build Varsity to educate traders and investors, we decided to experiment with the idea of educating children on basic concepts of Finance. As the country’s largest broker, we felt it was not just enough to educate adults and help them become financially literate but also to educate young Indians to embrace financial literacy early in their lives.
In Dec 2016, we self-published Rupee Tales, a set of 5 illustrated storybooks explaining the basic concepts of finance, such as banking, savings, insurance, taxes, etc. We printed 15,000 copies and had an overwhelmingly positive response, with all the copies getting sold in a short span.
Much to our dislike, we were forced to sell these books to cover printing and shipping costs. The cost of the book acted as a barrier, limiting the reach to a larger audience. With this thought, we even put up PDF copies of Rupee Tales, which can be freely downloaded.
With changing times, the medium of content consumption changed. Video as a primary format of content consumption has exponentially grown, especially after the pandemic hit us. Whether we adults like it or not, kids are glued to screens, although parents try their best to limit their child’s screen time. If this limited screen time can be utilized smartly, kids can watch something entertaining and also learn at the same time.
These were our thoughts behind Varsity Junior.
While Varsity has done well and has helped many Indians become financially literate, the younger Indians were left out. As Nithin often says, if India has to do well economically, then we need more wealth creation to happen within the country. For local wealth creation, more Indians have to take calculated risks. To take these calculated risks, Indians, especially the younger lot, must be financially literate and make better financial decisions when they start earning.
Most young Indians think financial education is a boring affair. But this need not be, and we plan to break that monotony with Varsity Junior, our brand-new initiative.
Varsity Junior is a series of animated stories. All the stories revolve around the day-to-day lives of a bunch of friends in a small Indian town. As each story develops, a financial lesson unfolds subtly. It is like watching a short story for the child, but in the end, there is a financial lesson to carry home.
Over the next few years, we will have many such stories, and with that, we hope the next generation of Indian kids will be much more financially aware.
We are excited to present Varsity Junior’s first episode, Ideas by the lake. I hope you and your family enjoy watching this as much as we enjoyed creating this story for you.
PS: Yes, we are deeply inspired by Malgudi days!
Karthik Rangappa
I'm of the belief that trading and investing is not a gift that you are born with but rather a skill that you can develop over time with practise and constant learning. At Zerodha, I'm focused on helping not just our clients but the community at large to understand the capital markets better and help them make better choices in the market.
Great Endeavor Sir ✨✨
Brilliant initiative Karthik & team!
Will love to see some content in vernacular languages.
More power to Nasir!
Superb initiative! “Fun”tastic episode to start with for kids. Excellent animation, script & story telling/voice over.
Great initiative! I was searching for the same kind of food nancial literary video for my kids . Thank you Varsity for such initiative for the younger generation . future of India
Zerodha team you are the market leader in this segment, and you are maintaining well, I personally appreciate your step Varsity Junior for better knowledge about finance for our kids. My salute to entire team including Nithin Kamath for a milestone step to financial universe.
Great initiative!
It’s very nice video to learn for children’s.
My suggestion is to do this video in local languages to understand it more easily.
It’s great thinking by zerodha.
Thanks for it.
Very nice initiative. Please keep continuing this.
Jay hind sir
Excellent initiative by Zerodha team with Karthik Rangappa. This is what we required for kids, keep up the good work. Hats off to Karthik!!
👍
Not only for juniors it also useful for younger investors
Wonderful initiative by Zerodha…!
Please make it in Hindi also, it will be very helpful for many more.
Thank you
Some feedback…good initiative but The video is too long and can be shortened.References to the word “Rich” can be removed I guess. It affects the kids brain. Also charts can not be understood
Loved watching it …but I feel the videos should be posted in a regular intervals or else the viewer will lose interest….I hope this is taken into consideration
Hi
I am a zerodha client and find this a great initiative. It will be better if we can inspire kids to develop solutions for indian problems. We have lot of sellers, resellers. We need many more kamaths.
Thanks
Excellent Initiative by Zerodha for enhancing knowledge about finance to kids.Keep up the good work.
very good vedio, my daughter felt rooted and understood the power of compounding. Thank you
Hi Zerodha team, this is a lovely initiative. A simple narrative bringing out the basic concepts – it works so well with kids. Hope there more videos coming up soon on Varsity Junior. Looking forward!