I'm an individual investor, not an Adviser. Can I use this?

Not directly — InvestorDNA is licensed to SEBI-registered Investment Advisers as part of their Reg 16 risk-profiling and Reg 17 suitability process, and it carries a price point built for advisory firms. If you are looking to understand your own behavioural patterns as an investor, the free Zerodha Varsity module on Trading Biases (zerodha.com/varsity) is an excellent starting point, as is behavioural finance research from the SEBI Investor Education portal (investor.sebi.gov.in). When you are ready to work with an RIA, ask whether they use InvestorDNA — that is the moment we will meet.

Is this approved by SEBI?

SEBI does not approve specific tools. The Investment Adviser Regulations require that the tools used for risk profiling be fit for the purpose (Reg 16). InvestorDNA is designed to that bar — four behavioural axes, psychometric grounding in Prospect Theory, and a compliance output that maps directly to the Reg 16-17 suitability matrix.

How long does a real (not-the-demo) InvestorDNA session take?

Ten minutes for the client interaction (25+ questions, adaptive). Five minutes of Adviser review. The compliance report and investor card are generated within seconds of completion.

Can I customise the archetype labels for my firm?

Founding cohort: no — the four Sanskrit archetypes (Kshetrapala, Sutradhar, Vikrami, Mimansak) are locked during the founding period. Standard tier: yes, with a 30-day lead time for custom labelling.

Does this integrate with my existing portfolio software?

On the roadmap. The founding cohort gets first access to the API endpoint for portfolio integrations. If you use a specific platform, mention it in the form — it helps us prioritise.

What languages does it support?

Q3 2026: English and Hindi. H1 2027: Tamil, Gujarati, Marathi, Bengali. The investor-facing card is the first surface to be localised; the compliance report remains English-primary for regulatory consistency.

Arthsankalp is a pre-seed behavioural intelligence company built in India, for Indian financial services. Founded by practitioners who believe that financial resilience starts with understanding behaviour — not predicting markets.

निवेशक डी-एन-ए · for SEBI Registered Investment Advisers

Behavioural fit, before the portfolio.

InvestorDNA is the four-axis behavioural profiling instrument for SEBI-registered Investment Advisers — a Reg 16-17 compliance input and an investor-facing archetype card, from one ten-minute interaction.

Join the founding cohort

क्षेत्रपाल

Kshetrapala

The Guardian · Conservative / Self-Directed

You guard what you have. Not from fear — from clarity. You know what your money is for, and you are not willing to gamble it on someone else's conviction. Your instinct is to protect first and grow second. In a falling market, you do not panic — you tighten. Your Adviser's job is not to push you into risk but to build a structure around the caution you already carry, so the caution works harder.

“Capital first. Returns second.”

सूत्रधार

Sutradhar

The Orchestrator · Conservative / Adviser-Led

You prefer to let the right people handle the right things. Not because you lack conviction — because you have seen what happens when conviction runs without counsel. You are the client who builds a team: an adviser, a CA, a spouse with veto power. Your strength is orchestration. Your Adviser's job is to be one instrument in the ensemble you already conduct — not the soloist.

“The right people, in the right seats.”

विक्रमी

Vikrami

The Bold Strider · Aggressive / Self-Directed

You walk toward risk, not away from it. A falling market is not a threat — it is a price. You have high conviction, act on your own analysis, and prefer speed to consensus. Your danger is not recklessness but isolation: when your thesis is wrong, there is no second voice in the room. Your Adviser's job is not to slow you down but to be the second voice you are missing — the one that earns the right to disagree.

“Conviction is the edge. Discipline is the moat.”

मीमांसक

Mimansak

The Inquirer · Aggressive / Adviser-Led

You want to understand everything before you act — and then you want someone qualified to confirm it. You are comfortable with risk, but not with uncertainty. You will take large positions if the logic holds and if someone you trust has stress-tested it. Your Adviser's job is not to hand you answers but to survive your questions — because you will ask all of them, and the quality of the relationship depends on the quality of those answers.

“Show me the logic. Then show me who checked it.”

निवेशक डी-एन-ए · 6 questions · 90 seconds

Discover your investor archetype

This is a sample of the instrument your RIA can run on you — not personal investment advice. Six questions. Four axes. One archetype.

चार अक्ष · Four Axes

What the instrument measures

Four axes. Two determine the archetype. Two modulate the report. All four feed the SEBI Reg 16-17 compliance output.

₹10L

Guaranteed

50/50

₹25L or ₹0

₹10,00,000 guaranteed — or a 50-50 flip between ₹25,00,000 and ₹0.

जोखिम प्रवृत्ति

Risk Appetite

How much loss can you sit with before you act on it?

Risk appetite is not how much you want to win. It is how much you can lose — on paper, for how long — without selling, freezing, or calling someone. A 30-year-old salaried engineer in Bengaluru with two SIPs and no dependents has a different risk appetite from a 52-year-old Surat jeweller who just paid an advance for his daughter's wedding. Same age group, same income band — completely different appetite. Neither is wrong. Both are real.

Sample Question

“Your portfolio just dropped 25% in a month. Markets are panicked. What feels most like you in the first 48 hours?”

Compliance report → This axis becomes the Risk Tolerance band on the SEBI Reg 16 risk-profiling matrix (Low / Moderate / High / Very High), with the underlying score retained for audit.

Archetype card → Pushes the archetype toward Vikrami (Bold Strider) or Kshetrapala (Guardian) on the high/low dimension.

Steady salary

Lumpy inflows

Same bucket, different drip patterns — steady, gush, irregular, or rare floods.

नकदी प्रवाह

Cash Flow

How predictable is the money coming in?

Two clients with the same ₹40 lakh annual income are not the same client. The salaried one gets ₹3.3L on the 1st of every month. The business owner gets ₹15L in March, ₹2L in April, ₹0 in May, ₹8L in June. The salaried one can run a 60-month SIP without flinching. The business owner cannot — not because she is less wealthy, but because her cash flow has a different rhythm. SEBI's suitability framework does not care about your income; it cares about whether your income arrives when your investment plan needs it to.

Sample Question

“Pick the statement closest to your reality.”

Compliance report → This axis becomes the Investment Horizon × Liquidity Need cross-tab on the suitability matrix. A lumpy cash flow forces a higher cash-buffer suitability constraint regardless of risk appetite.

Archetype card → Does not flip the archetype; it modulates the report copy within an archetype. A Vikrami with steady cash flow gets a more aggressive equity tilt than a Vikrami with lumpy cash flow.

Committed

Free

₹0₹100

Of every ₹100, how much is already locked — EMI, school, premium, parents, household?

दायित्व

Obligations

How much of your money is already spoken for before it arrives?

EMIs. School fees. Insurance premiums. Money sent home to parents. The cost of running the household. Obligations are the must-pay floor under your income. A client whose obligations consume ₹70 of every ₹100 they earn has ₹30 of true investable surplus — and a very high risk tolerance answer means almost nothing in that context, because losing the surplus means breaking a commitment to someone else. Loss aversion in this band is not psychological; it is structural.

Sample Question

“Of every ₹100 you earn in a month, roughly how much is already committed before it arrives — EMIs, school fees, premiums, support to family?”

Compliance report → This axis becomes the Capacity for Loss field on the suitability matrix (distinct from willingness for loss, which is Risk Appetite). SEBI's separation of willingness from capacity is precisely the structural separation the regulator has been asking for.

Archetype card → Non-flipping; it modulates the investor card narrative. A Kshetrapala with low obligations reads as chosen caution; with high obligations, as structural reality.

Solo

Network

Solo path or group path — both valid, neither resolved on this page.

निर्णय संदर्भ

Decision Context

Who is in the room when you make a financial decision?

Indian financial decisions are rarely made alone. A husband consults his wife; a daughter consults her father; an HNI consults her CA, her mother, and the family friend who is good with money. This is not a bug — it is the actual decision-making unit. An advisory plan that ignores who else is in the room loses to family pressure the first time markets fall. Decision Context measures how much of your decision is yours versus how much sits in a network — and which way you lean when the network and your instinct disagree.

Sample Question

“When you make a meaningful financial decision — say, ₹5 lakh+ — what's true about the conversation around it?”

Compliance report → This axis appears in the compliance report as the Decision-Making Unit (DMU) tag — a free-text field the Adviser can use to record who else needs to sign off. This protects the Adviser from reversal disputes.

Archetype card → The archetype-flipping axis along with Risk. Internal leads to Vikrami or Kshetrapala. External leads to Mimansak or Sutradhar. This is the axis that makes InvestorDNA Indian.

द्वि-उत्पाद · Dual Output

One session, two deliverables

The investor gets an archetype card they can understand. The Adviser gets a compliance-grade suitability matrix they can defend. Both from the same ten-minute interaction.

Investor-Facing Card

Client: XXXX · Age: 35–45 · AUM: ₹10–₹50L

विक्रमी

Vikrami

The Bold Strider

“Conviction is the edge. Discipline is the moat.”

Behavioural Signature

●Buys into falling markets on own conviction

●Prefers speed and lump-sum deployment

●Acts on own analysis, resists consensus

●Views drawdowns as pricing opportunities

Suggested Allocation

Aggressive

Equity 60–80%

Debt 10–20%

Alt 10–15%

Cash 5–10%

Drawdown tolerance:20–30% tolerated

What This Means For You

1/4

जोखिम प्रवृत्तिRisk Appetite

Into the drawdown

A falling market is not a threat — it is a price. You have high conviction and act on your own analysis. A 20–30% drawdown is tolerable if the thesis holds. Your danger is not recklessness but isolation — your adviser is the second voice you are missing.

Drawdown tolerance: 20–30% tolerated

Compliance Report · SEBI Reg 16-17

Client: XXXX · IA Reg No: XXXX · Date: XX/XX/XXXX

Suitability Assessment

Aggressive / Self-Directed

Risk Tolerance BandHigh

Suitability BucketAggressive / Self-Directed

Equity Allocation60–80%

Drawdown Tolerance20–30% tolerated

Rebalance TriggerDrift > 10% or macro event

Axis Detail

1/4

जोखिम प्रवृत्तिRisk Appetite

BandHigh

ScoreX.X / 10

Reg MappingSEBI Reg 16 — Risk Tolerance Band

Willingness for LossHigh

Loss Aversion IndexLow (bottom quartile)

Drawdown Tolerance20–30% tolerated

Recovery PatienceIndefinite — views drawdown as opportunity

Behavioural TriggerBuys into falling markets on own conviction

All PII redacted. Full report available inside the Adviser compliance dashboard.

प्रमाण · Provenance

Method and provenance

When your compliance team asks “is this defensible?” — these are the walls.

Behavioural Foundation

Prospect Theory: An Analysis of Decision Under Risk

Kahneman & Tversky · Econometrica, 1979

The loss-aversion architecture. InvestorDNA's Risk Appetite axis measures the structural asymmetry between gains and losses — the Kahneman-Tversky insight that a ₹1 lakh loss hurts roughly twice as much as a ₹1 lakh gain feels good.

Regulatory Frame

SEBI (Investment Advisers) Regulations, 2013 — Regulations 16 and 17

Securities and Exchange Board of India · sebi.gov.in

Reg 16 mandates risk profiling; Reg 17 mandates suitability assessment. InvestorDNA is built as a Reg 16-17 input — a behavioural profiling instrument that feeds the Adviser's compliance workflow, not a replacement for it.

Psychometric Precedent

FinaMetrica 25-Question Risk Tolerance Questionnaire

FinaMetrica / Morningstar · Guillemette, Finke & Gilliam, Journal of Financial Planning, 2012

The global standard for risk tolerance psychometrics. InvestorDNA extends this frame with two additional axes — Cash Flow and Decision Context — that capture Indian-specific behavioural patterns the Anglo-American instruments structurally miss.

Data Protection

Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 + DPDP Rules, 2025

Government of India · PIB November 2025 notification

Consent must be free, specific, informed, unconditional and unambiguous. InvestorDNA's data handling follows the DPDP framework — granular consent, documented retention, and a clear deletion pathway.

उत्पाद प्रवाह · Product Flow

Two interfaces from one behavioural profile.

The same interaction produces an adviser-grade operating view and an investor-facing explanation view.

RIA workspace

A dashboard built for the adviser workflow.

Track profiling status, review suitability bands, export compliance notes, and know which investor needs a follow-up before the portfolio conversation.

Reg 16-17 report ready

Profile captured

Suitability mapped

Investor card sent

Shared source

One profile powers both sides

Audit trail

LIVE

RIA Console

Client readiness

Profiles

Review

96%

Complete

A. Sharma

High loss tolerance

R. Mehta

Cash buffer needed

N. Iyer

Decision network

Two clients need an adviser review before product recommendation.

संकल्प · Join

Apply to the founding cohort

Five slots at ₹25,000/month. Twenty-four-month lock. A conversation first — no commitment until we both agree it fits.

प्रश्न · Questions

Behavioural fit, before the portfolio.

Discover your investor archetype

What the instrument measures

Risk Appetite

Cash Flow

Obligations

Decision Context

One session, two deliverables

Vikrami

Into the drawdown

Suitability Assessment

Method and provenance

Prospect Theory: An Analysis of Decision Under Risk

SEBI (Investment Advisers) Regulations, 2013 — Regulations 16 and 17

FinaMetrica 25-Question Risk Tolerance Questionnaire

Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 + DPDP Rules, 2025

Two interfaces from one behavioural profile.

A dashboard built for the adviser workflow.

Client readiness

Apply to the founding cohort

Frequently asked