Building AdvisorAlpha.in, a SEBI-Compliant Advisory Platform That Replaced Smallcase. Here’s What We Learned.

How Fintegration engineered a SEBI-compliant, cross-platform investment advisory app with mobile & web platforms, microservices on AWS, and growth-ready middleware.

Client: Renaissance Smart Tech |  Industry: Fintech / Investment Advisory  |  Platforms: iOS, Android, PWA, AWS, .NET

Every quarter, we sit across from a new SEBI-registered Research Analyst or Investment Advisor who says some version of the same thing:

“We’ve outgrown Smallcase. We’re paying 10–20% of revenue to a marketplace that puts us next to traders we have nothing in common with. We don’t own the client relationship. We can’t control the experience. And when we want to build something differentiated, an AI recommendation engine, a proprietary risk profiling flow, an integrated content strategy, we hit a wall.”

Executive Summary

Renaissance Smart Tech, the SEBI-registered Research Analyst arm of Renaissance Investment Managers (founded by Pankaj Murarka, former CIO of Axis Mutual Fund managing $5bn+ in equities), needed to transition from distributing investment advice through third-party marketplaces to owning the entire client experience through a proprietary B2C platform. Fintegration designed, built, and launched AdvisorAlpha.in; a cross-platform investment advisory application live on iOS, Android, and PWA; featuring SEBI-compliant onboarding, KYC verification, model portfolio baskets, single-stock advisory, subscription management with integrated payments, and a growth engineering stack built for scale.

Results and Business Impact

• Three platforms, one codebase: Live on iOS, Android, and Flutter Web with consistent UX.

• Full client ownership: Zero marketplace dependency, zero platform revenue share.

• Multi-broker support: Zerodha, Groww, Angel One, ICICI Direct, HDFC Securities via Smallcase Gateway.

• Regulatory readiness: SEBI RA license INH000021818 with BSE enlistment, fully compliant infrastructure.

• Scalable foundation: Architecture supports upcoming MF advisory, bonds, and recommendation engine without re-platforming.

The Challenge

Renaissance was already managing significant AUM across PMS and AIF structures, with Pankaj Murarka’s 28-year track record as a core differentiator. However, their distribution model had structural limitations:

• Marketplace dependency: Distributing through Smallcase meant competing alongside 250+ advisors on someone else’s platform, sharing 10–20% of subscription revenue, and losing control of the client relationship.

• High-ticket limitation: PMS/AIF products require ₹50L+ minimums, locking out the massive Indian retail investor market.

• Regulatory complexity: SEBI’s evolving guidelines for RAs offering model portfolios demanded purpose-built compliance workflows that no off-the-shelf platform fully addressed.

• Brand dilution: Renaissance’s proprietary SQGARP™ investment philosophy needed to be the entire brand narrative, not a footnote in a marketplace.

They evaluated alternatives, including Deseo (PaaS API infrastructure for advisors), B2B model portfolio platform, and more, but none offered the combination of full UX ownership, Web support, deep middleware integration, and growth engineering tooling that their ambitions required

The Solution: What Fintegration Built

Fintegration delivered a full-stack, cross-platform investment advisory application: mobile apps (iOS, Android), a PWA Web application, microservices backend on AWS, a middleware layer for third-party orchestration, and an integrated growth engineering stack.

SEBI Compliance by Design

• KYC-first onboarding: PAN validation via CVL KRA, document upload, and e-sign agreements before subscription.

• Risk profiling: Structured 7-question assessment producing Conservative/Moderate/Aggressive classifications per SEBI suitability requirements.

• Audit trails: Comprehensive logging with 7-year retention per SEBI/RBI guidelines.

• Data security: AES-256 encryption, TLS 1.3, RBAC, tokenised payments, AWS WAF/Shield.

Microservices Architecture on AWS

The backend follows a microservices architecture deployed on Amazon EKS, with each domain as an independently deployable service:

Microservice	Responsibility
User Management	Registration via OTP, authentication (Keycloak + JWT), risk profiling, CRM integration
KYC Service	PAN validation via CVL KRA SOAP APIs, Aadhaar verification, e-sign (Digio), encrypted document storage
Portfolio Management	Model portfolio baskets, risk-based recommendations, rebalancing engine, Smallcase Gateway for trade execution
Payment Service	Razorpay, subscription billing, UPI mandates, refund processing, reconciliation
Notification Service	Multi-channel delivery: in-app (WebEngage), push (Firebase), SMS (Gupshup), email (AWS SES)

Workflow orchestration is handled by Temporal.io, managing long-running processes like onboarding with durable execution, automatic retries, and state persistence. Users can drop off at any step and resume exactly where they left off, even on a different device.

Inter-service communication uses RESTful APIs for synchronous operations and Apache Kafka for asynchronous event streaming. AWS API Gateway serves as the unified entry point with OAuth 2.0 authentication and rate limiting.

Data layer: MSSQL on AWS RDS (multi-AZ), leveraging Renaissance’s existing schema with new entities via TypeORM in NestJS. AES-256 encryption (AWS KMS) for all PII/KYC data at rest, TLS 1.3 in transit.

Flutter Cross-Platform: Solving the Cross-Platform Challenge

One of the project’s most significant technical achievements was delivering a production-ready Flutter Web application. Flutter Web remains challenging due to limited framework support for web-specific integrations, browser payment flows, and deep linking.

Fintegration created a custom bridge layer to solve web-specific integration gaps — particularly around Smallcase Gateway SDK initialisation (natively mobile-only), Razorpay checkout in browser contexts, and Firebase push notification handling on web. This bridge abstracts platform-specific implementations behind a unified Dart interface, keeping business logic platform-agnostic.

The frontend uses Flutter 3.29 with Riverpod for state management. AWS CloudFront serves static assets with edge caching for sub-second load times.

Middleware: The Integration Orchestration Layer

At Fintegration, we place strong emphasis on middleware as a core engineering discipline. The middleware layer orchestrates communication between a complex web of third-party services:

Smallcase Gateway	Portfolio discovery, trade execution, holdings import, rebalancing across 5+ brokers
CVL KRA (SOAP)	Real-time PAN validation and KYC status against centralized records
Digio	E-signature for advisory agreements with audit logging
Razorpay	Subscription payments, UPI mandates, webhook-based reconciliation
Gupshup	OTP delivery, transactional SMS for payments and rebalancing alerts
CMOTS / Nifty APIs	Live equity data, benchmarking, portfolio performance calculations
Keycloak	OAuth 2.0 identity management, JWT lifecycle, Google/Apple linking

The middleware handles retry logic, circuit breaking, response transformation, and error normalization, ensuring third-party failures do not cascade into user-facing issues.

Growth Engineering Stack

• Mixpanel: Event-based product analytics with funnel analysis for conversion optimisation across the onboarding-to-investment journey.

  
  

• WebEngage: User segmentation and personalised engagement, triggering targeted notifications based on risk profile, subscription status, and behavioural signals

  
  

• Firebase Analytics: Core mobile analytics, crash reporting, and performance monitoring across iOS and Android

  
  

• Deep Linking: Universal deep links connecting push notifications, email campaigns, and marketing directly to specific in-app flows — critical for converting marketing spend to action

  
  

• CMS Console: Backend content management for model portfolios, market insights, FAQs, and educational materials without requiring app releases.

Technology Stack

Layer	Technologies
Frontend	Flutter 3.29, Riverpod, Material Design, custom web bridge
Backend	Node.js, NestJS (TypeScript), TypeORM, Temporal.io
Database	MSSQL on AWS RDS (multi-AZ), Redis cache
Infrastructure	AWS EKS, API Gateway, S3, CloudFront, KMS, WAF, Shield
CI/CD	AWS CodePipeline, CodeBuild, ArgoCD, Terraform
Auth	Keycloak (OAuth 2.0, JWT), Gupshup OTP
Payments	Razorpay, UPI mandates
Trade Execution	Smallcase Gateway SDK (5+ broker integrations)
KYC/Compliance	CVL KRA (SOAP), Digio (e-sign), AES-256, 7-year retention
Growth	Mixpanel, WebEngage, Firebase Analytics, deep linking
Messaging	Apache Kafka, AWS SES, AWS SNS

About Fintegration

Fintegration (FintegrationFS.com) is a fintech product engineering firm with over a decade of experience building production-grade financial technology platforms. We specialize in investment advisory platforms, portfolio management systems, broker integrations, and SEBI/RBI-compliant fintech infrastructure for clients across the US, India, EU, and APAC.