In a small house hidden among Budgam’s apple trees and winding lanes, a 20-year-old is chasing Wall Street with code.
Ifham Banday, a student at IIT Madras, is building Walford Capitals, an AI-powered platform designed to simplify and democratize investing.
At an age when most students are just starting internships, Banday is writing algorithms, assembling a team, and pitching a vision ambitious even by Silicon Valley standards: making hedge-fund-grade tools accessible to ordinary people.
“We want to take the friction out of finance,” he said from his home. “Whether you’re a trader in Mumbai or a college student in Srinagar, your decision-making power should be the same if you have data and intelligence on your side.”
This idea of leveling the field with machine learning is gaining traction globally.
Financial services everywhere are transforming. Hedge funds increasingly use artificial intelligence and quantitative models to spot inefficiencies in markets. In New York, London, Singapore, and Hong Kong, AI predicts asset prices, optimizes portfolios, and automates risk management.
JPMorgan has built tools that scan millions of news articles for trading cues. BlackRock uses AI to forecast bond yields. Retail platforms like Robinhood and Wealthfront are adding algorithmic nudges and behavioural finance tools.
India is on the cusp of this shift too. A 2024 NASSCOM report projects the Indian fintech market will reach $2.1 trillion by 2030, with AI-driven investing playing a central role.
Yet most innovation is centered in metros like Bengaluru, Mumbai, and Hyderabad. Kashmir doesn’t feature on that map.
That’s what makes Banday’s story unusual. He isn’t just entering India’s fintech boom, he’s building something Kashmir hasn’t seen before.
Banday’s journey began in the computer lab of Delhi Public School Budgam, learning to code on old desktops and teaching himself how financial markets worked.
By the time he reached IIT Madras, he was already exploring market simulations and algorithmic trading tools.
A turning point came in his first year when he landed an internship at a Y Combinator-backed startup. Working closely with founders, he experienced how fintech products were built and scaled at speed.
“That internship was my first exposure to how quickly things move in the real startup world,” he said. “I saw how decisions were made, teams were built, and products scaled globally in months.”
Later, he earned an 80% scholarship, worth nearly ₹1.5 lakh, from Harvard Business School Online to study business fundamentals. The coursework gave him a framework for strategy, finance, hiring, and compliance.
“It helped me understand that a good product needs structure,” he said. With that clarity, Walford Capitals was born.
At its core, Walford is an AI-driven asset management platform. It offers trading dashboards, real-time analytics, and autonomous decision agents that help investors analyze and execute strategies without the complexity of traditional tools.
“Most traders juggle Bloomberg, Excel, news feeds, Twitter, technical indicators, and charts,” Banday explained. “We want to bring everything into one intelligent system that learns and adapts.”
The platform isn’t just for professionals. It aims to support everyone from small-town traders to college students trying to understand equities.
Walford could be transformative in Kashmir, where financial education is limited and stock market access is low.
“Kashmiris often don’t consider finance as a career because it feels distant,” Banday said. “What if the tools weren’t intimidating? What if they were built with our context in mind?” Even at this early stage, Walford is attracting attention.
The Wadhwani Foundation, known for mentoring high-potential startups, selected it for its entrepreneurship program.
Banday has been chosen as a delegate for the Artificial Intelligence and Blockchain Conference and as a Harvard representative at a global business summit in Tokyo.
He recently ranked in the top 20% of the WorldQuant Challenge, a global competition testing quantitative finance strategies.
During a startup session, he met Peter Davison, an early investor and mentor to Elon Musk, who encouraged him to keep going.
For a founder in a conflict-affected region, without large networks or venture capital, these are significant milestones.
Kashmir has long been on the edges of India’s tech story. While Bengaluru, Delhi, and Mumbai boast incubators and startup funds, most Kashmiri founders work in isolation, often without mentorship. But change is coming. A new generation of tech-savvy youth is building apps, platforms, consultancies, and content startups. They are self-taught, globally aware, and driven more by grit than capital. Banday sees Walford as part of this wave.
“There are kids in Shopian and Kupwara running simulations late at night, watching MIT lectures on YouTube, debugging alone,” he said. “They may not have a co-working space or startup fund, but they have talent. What they need is belief, bandwidth, and a push.”
Walford Capitals is still early. The team is refining the platform, building partnerships, and preparing pilot tests with small investor groups. Banday is expanding his team with young engineers, finance analysts, and UI designers, many from small towns.
There are no revenues or product launches yet, but energy and belief are growing.
“We’re not trying to be the next flashy startup,” he said. “We’re trying to solve a hard problem. We’ll take our time and do it right.”
Back in Budgam, Banday works late into the night. A secondhand monitor glows in his room. A to-do list sits next to an open corporate finance textbook. The windows rattle with wind. But the signal holds, and so does the vision.
Online Source:
Kashmir Observer
