Mumbai: In October 2023, a YouTube video shared the supposed story of a homemaker, Lakshmi Sreenivasan, who went from simply caring for her family and depending on their income to becoming a crorepati herself.
Released by the Mumbai-based Avadhut Sathe Trading Academy Private Limited (ASTAPL), started by Avadhut Sathe, the video claimed Lakshmi had hit the milestone of Rs 1 crore by trading Bank Nifty Options in just 2.5 years between December 2020 and March 2023.
She was one of the “Lakshmis of ASTA (Avadhut Sathe Trading Academy)” as the advertisement said.
The Securities & Exchange Board of India (SEBI), India’s market regulator, inspected her profit and loss details to find that the advertisement was a white lie. Lakshmi had made money through options trading, but her actual profit was far lower at Rs 4.17 lakh.
Sathe, who in his videos would often say “Market is God”, has now been barred from the market. The SEBI has restrained him and his academy from buying, selling, or dealing in securities either directly or indirectly, until further notice.
The regulator has alleged that under the guise of running an educational venture—Avadhut Sathe Trading Academy—Sathe and his academy’s trainers consistently provided investment advice and research analysis despite not being registered with the SEBI. Further, they also allegedly published misleading and false claims, such as the one about Lakshmi Srinivasan, to draw more enrollments in the academy.
“Preliminary examination in the matter indicated that ASTAPL/Sathe was engaged in providing unregistered investment advisory and research analyst services under the guise of stock market education while using live market trading data during sessions,” the SEBI said in its order, adding that Sathe’s academy had also taken large amounts of money from “unsuspecting investors”.
“In addition, ASTAPL/Sathe was found to be disseminating misleading information and advertisements through social media platforms, aimed at inducing investors by portraying unrealistic returns from stock market activities,” said the 4 December order.
The SEBI has also slapped a penalty of Rs 546.16 crore on Sathe and his firm for allegedly providing unregistered investment advisory and research analysis. The amount, as per the SEBI’s calculations, is the unlawful gains earned from giving investment advice without being authorised to do so.
The SEBI directed Sathe and his firm to open a fixed deposit account to deposit the said sum in there, and has ordered banks not to allow any debit from it. It also ordered that none of Sathe or his firm’s assets or properties be disposed of till the amount of the penalty is recovered.
Further, the regulator has asked Sathe and his wife Gauri Sathe, also a director in the company, as well as ASTAPL, to show cause as to why it should not direct them to refund the fees collected from participants.
ASTAPL did not respond to ThePrint’s email requesting a comment. This report will be updated if and when they respond.
But on its website, Avadhut Sathe Trading Academy says it is a financial market training institute and does not provide any investment tips or advice to its students. “Any trades discussed during the training sessions are purely for educational purposes and should not be misconstrued as trading advice.”
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An IT professional & first-gen trader
In his tutorials, some of which ThePrint has seen, Sathe often talks about how and why he started his academy in 2017. Admittedly, he is a first-generation stock market trader and investor in his family.
“My father used to always refer to the stock market as a satta bazaar, but can we blame the market for this? Absolutely not. The market is not a gambling house or a casino. It is a genuine marketplace, and it gives equal opportunity to everyone to build wealth,” Sathe had said at one of his lectures.
In an interview with Big FM in 2023, Sathe said that to prove his father wrong and show that trading can make money, he bought the shares of Infosys, which had its Initial Public Offering in 1993.
“I finished my engineering in 1991. I used to dabble in markets a bit. I had Gujarati friends because of which I had some exposure to stock markets, but I had no knowledge. If I had knowledge, I would have held on to the Infosys shares pre-IPO; today, they would have been worth Rs 15 crore. I sold them off,” he had told the radio station.
In one of his lectures in 2015, Sathe had shared the backstory that prompted him to start lectures on stock markets.
A computer science engineer, Sathe spent 17 years working in the IT industry and started trading full-time in 2007.
“I was with Hexaware Technologies. I had a 300-person team, 27 projects with me across the world. But this was a real passion, so I left. But I realised a trader’s life is a little lonely. So people started saying, ‘Why don’t you teach?. I conducted my first seminar in 2008,” he said.
In his early days as a trader, Sathe was told that he sounded very bearish.
“I started an F&O (Futures and Options) account because that’s the only way I could have made money in the falling markets. 2008 was a fantastic year for me, and people who did courses with me that year. When the Sensex fell below 10,000, we had a party,” Sathe said in the lecture.
He also likes to study psychology, he said. “It’s a key part for all of you to be successful.”
In several of his interviews, Sathe said he didn’t have any trading background in his family, and there are perhaps several like him who don’t. So, his academy, he said, tried to fill that void, “like a family”.
Rs 601 crore in 10 years
Avadhut and Gauri Sathe incorporated the Avadhut Sathe Trading Academy Private Limited in January 2020, before which it was a proprietorship firm with Avadhut Sathe as the proprietor. The proprietorship was established in July 2017.
It now has centres across Indian cities such as Delhi, Chandigarh, Kolkata, Bhubaneshwar, Bengaluru, Pune, Chennai, Hyderabad, Kochi, Ahmedabad, Indore, Nagpur, Nashik, Navi Mumbai, and Mumbai, where the company is headquartered.
The academy offers training in Marathi, Hindi, English, Tamil, Kannada, Telugu, and Bengali.
Neither Avadhut nor Gauri Sathe is registered with the SEBI as investment advisors or research analysts, or in any other capacity.
The SEBI has furnished the details of the courses that the academy offers and their pricing. Firstly, there is a basic webinar that ASTA calls an “eye opener”, which is priced at Rs 500, following which participants are urged to sign up for other programmes. There is a flagship programme for Rs 72,000, titled GEO (Get Edge over Others).
There are four other acronyms under this that, in a nutshell, make up the course —SMM (Secrets of Market Millionaires), PAPA (Pay Attention to Price Action), FOME (Futures Options Made Easy), and GUE (Get Ultimate Edge). Then there are advanced programmes, a GEO panoramic that costs Rs 6,000 and a much costlier GEO Plus at Rs 1.7 lakh.
Then there is a mentorship programme of one year that costs Rs 6.75 lakh. As per the website, this offline and online programme will “sharpen your mindset and technical analysis skills and develop the character that deserves success.”
There are two other “guided journey programmes”—Aarambh for Rs 18,000, and Samanvay for Rs 90,000. The website says these are prerequisites for all subsequent programmes.
According to the SEBI, Sathe and ASTAPL collected Rs 601.37 crore from the course participants for various programmes between 25 July 2015 and 9 October 2025.
Meanwhile, the SEBI looked at the profit and loss statements of those who had enrolled in ASTAPL’s most expensive mentorship programme for six months after completing the course. It scrutinised the stock exchange activity of 186 of the 311 participants from the last two batches of the programme and found that they had cumulatively lost Rs 1.93 crore.
How the probe unfolded
The SEBI examined the activities of Avadhut Sathe Trading Academy and Sathe during fiscal 2023-24, and found that the academy claimed that its students consistently earn good money through trading and that the academy’s trainers are stock market experts.
The SEBI alleged that the academy used to selectively publish certain profitable trades of its investors to support its claim. However, the analysis of all the trades showed that all of the academy’s trainers and students were in net losses.
The SEBI issued an administrative warning to the academy on 1 March 2024, cautioning it against selective disclosures and misrepresentation.
But despite the notice, the academy continued to publish such videos with allegedly false claims, the regulator said. Meanwhile, the SEBI started getting a lot of complaints from the academy’s students.
The SEBI appointed an investigating authority in July this year to conduct a detailed investigation for the period from 1 July 2017 to 9 October 2025. In August this year, the investigating authority searched the premises of the academy and Avadhut and Gauri Sathe, also a director with her husband Avadhut, in ASTAPL.
Calling financial literacy the “need of the hour for the long-term growth of the security market”, the SEBI clarified that there wouldn’t have been any cause of action if Sathe and his academy were indeed providing educational services.
However, prima facie, it said, in Sathe’s case, he does not appear to be providing educational services. The regulator cited multiple instances showing the academy gave stock-specific entry and exit points, prompted participants to place orders based on its recommendations, and even alerted them when stop-loss levels were hit.
“The participants were being hand-held in the live trading session. They are also asked to invest part of their capital in specific securities for better returns than FDs. None of these attributes would be seen in a case where pure educational activity is carried out,” the order said.
‘An illusion of accuracy’
Students who had enrolled with ASTA raised complaints with the SEBI on how they were promised extraordinary returns, but ended up incurring substantial losses.
Some of the complainants also alleged that the quality of teaching was not as good as what was advertised, and that the staff members also pushed individuals to take loans to pay the course fees.
The complaints alleged that the trainer would conclude with a specific stock pick and then schedule a follow-up session to showcase its performance. This controlled setup, as per the SEBI, created an “illusion of accuracy” and prompted people to sign up for more ASTA programmes. The academy conducted live market trading sessions, giving direct trade recommendations.
Avadhut Sathe often shared his own live trading positions and displayed mark-to-market gains. There were paid WhatsApp groups where live trade advice was disguised as “chart study”.
According to the SEBI order, there was a lot of misrepresentation through testimonials and social media content. For instance, ASTA used a promotional video featuring a 12-year-old child “falsely suggesting that stock market trading becomes effortless after training”.
ASTA urged course participants to share their trades on its website, raising concerns over the potential misuse of the investors’ trading data.
The SEBI analysed the video recordings of the various courses during the investigation. In one of the videos analysed by SEBI, Avadhut Sathe was showing the live price volume chart of Power Finance Corporation, where he was giving specific stop-loss levels and targets during live market hours. One participant said, “Sir, hum sab ne le liya, maine toh sunte hi initiate kar diya tha. (Sir, we have all bought it. I initiated it the moment I heard about it.)”
In another video from 2023, Sathe, while discussing the stock of IDFC First Bank Ltd, provided several details such as directional movement, support level, stop-loss and target.
In another 2020 video that the SEBI has cited in its order, Sathe, while discussing the stock of HDFC Life Insurance Company, said, “HDFC Life is the only stock which is at an all-time high… so this is undoubtedly the out-performer, toh agar insurance sector me kuch lena hi hai to HDFC life le lo, otherwise hath bhi mat lagao kidhar (if you want to buy a stock in the insurance sector, then buy HDFC Life, otherwise don’t even touch the sector).”
In another session from May 2025, Sathe said, “I don’t think this ITC will fall below 424. Okay, this is another stock I wish to buy tomorrow.”
“At one place, the academy is also asking course participants/investors to invest part of their capital/FD, based on their risk, in specific securities which will give them returns higher than FD. Some participants are observed to be confirming that they took a position based on the advice of ASTAPL/Sathe. ASTAPL/Sathe is also seen assuring returns more than FD to the course participants/investors,” the SEBI said in its order, adding that based on all the transcripts, it is clear that the nature of activity of Sathe or his academy falls in the realm of investment advisory or research analysis.
A scrutiny of Sathe’s and ASTAPL’s WhatsApp groups also showed the same pattern.
The SEBI order said that the search and seizure exercises showed that Sathe and ASTAPL had created multiple private WhatsApp groups named ‘ASTA: VOW 25-26,’ ‘ASTA: VOW 24-25,’ ‘ASTA: VOW 2023-24,’ and ‘ASTA: VOW 22-23.’
The members comprise ASTAPL’s course participants who pay an annual fee to be part of the group. The SEBI’s investigation showed that 1,683 course participants had enrolled in the groups by paying about Rs 30,000 per person.
“The contents of the WhatsApp groups show that Sathe has been providing stock recommendations/advice on a regular basis, including stop-loss levels, targets, and forecasts of the directional movement of specific stocks,” the SEBI said in its order.
The order also said that Sathe and his academy would also broadcast the same message across multiple WhatsApp groups where their course participants were members. This means they were essentially giving the same investment advice to a large number of people simultaneously.
Influencing trading behaviour
During the investigation, the SEBI examined two specific WhatsApp groups of ASTAPL and the order placement details of its members, and found that the course participants were placing orders based on Sathe’s recommendations.
“In fact, out of 34 instances examined, it was found that course participants/investors had traded in 33 instances which were recommended by Sathe during the course,” the SEBI said.
For instance, in a February 2025 message about Nifty, 22 course participants placed buy orders and sell orders in the Nifty Index Options in two days.
In another message in June 2023 about Powergrid Corporation of India Limited, Sathe said, “Powergrid, which setup is it? I have been bullish since 1 June. Today, I plan to add.” And just like that, 11 course participants placed buy orders.
The SEBI also found that in some instances, while Sathe would make recommendations to course participants, he himself would not make those trades. For example, on a WhatsApp group on 4 January 2024, Sathe said, “Btw added SAIL in equity near 118.9…”
The SEBI checked with the exchange, and found no such order placed by Sathe on that date in the scrip.
“This leads to an incontrovertible conclusion that Sathe was in substance providing advisory /recommendation of trading calls in the garb of educational activities,” the SEBI order said.
In fiscal 2024-25 and 2025-26 till November, Sathe himself has suffered a loss of Rs 4.3 crore in trading, while ASTAPL has suffered a loss of Rs 1.88 crore during the same period. Gauri Sathe had not traded at all during this period despite advertising themselves as market experts, the SEBI’s investigation found.
The SEBI further said that Sathe had put up a series of misleading testimonials and advertisements, like that of Lakshmi Sreenivasan.
In October 2021, he had facilitated a discussion with the “Lakshmis of ASTA”, also featuring one Smruti Apte, an ex-banker, who Sathe said was consistently earning more than her salary after registering at his academy. As per the SEBI, the video specifically stated her supposed profits between March and October 2021.
“However, upon perusal of the Profit and Loss details received from the stock exchanges, it is observed that Ms. Smruti Apte actually incurred a loss of Rs 1,38,244.37 from trading during the same period,” the SEBI said.
Similarly, Rehan Shaikh, in a video testimonial uploaded on 9 July this year, was said to have purchased a bike with his trading profit of Rs 2.5 lakh that he supposedly earned between August 2023 and May 2024. However, the SEBI found out that Shaikh had actually incurred a loss of Rs 13,256 during this period.
Among its other directions, the SEBI has asked Sathe and his firm to withdraw all such “misleading” videos, statements, testimonials, and advertisements.
In the interview with Big FM, Sathe had said the market is like God for him. “Whatever it gives, we accept it as the ‘prasad’ (devotional offering) and move on,” Sathe had said.
This time, the ‘Prasad’ has come with a bitter tinge.
(Edited by Ajeet Tiwari)
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