Hmm… we have discussed earlier in the thread that if you setup a company only with the purpose of trading, you will end up needing to take an NBFC license.
A company or limited liability partnership (LLP) is created with those wanting their money to be managed being shareholders or partners. Their pooled funds are then used as trading capital. There are a couple of issues with this.
Firstly, an LLP with the objective of investing or trading is not allowed, so people use an alternate objective to create the LLP. This is a clear violation of MCA (Ministry of Corporate Affairs) rules. In the case of a Private Limited or Public Limited company, if more than 50% of revenue comes from financial income (trading), then the company is required to get registered as an NBFC (Non-Banking Financial Corporation) with RBI. One way to avoid this NBFC registration is by becoming a stockbroker and registering with SEBI. Both these registrations come with their compliance requirements, and as a stockbroker, an added cost of having to run a full broking stack as the firm cannot rely on other brokers for trading.
This could also be set up as a partnership firm to avoid the NBFC or SEBI registration requirement, but the issue with a partnership firm is that all partners have unlimited liability. In trading, where potentially there could be unlimited losses, partnership firms are not the right structure for investors.
While running trading through a setup like this allows flexibility in trading and collecting fees, you can’t actively seek new investors in the business promising returns from trading the markets. This would qualify the entity to register as an AIF. Check this SEBI order (Page 14, Point ix) banning the entity and the promoters for actively seeking capital to be invested into the stock markets as an LLP (without AIF license). So at best, if you did create a company or partnership firm, this can be set up only with family (white or allowed) and friends (grey) as a proprietary trading firm (grey). But you can’t actively seek capital from outsiders to manage (black).