The Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) has banned financial influencer Avadhut Sathe and his firm, Avadhut Sathe Trading Academy Pvt Ltd (ASTAPL), extensively. The regulator has also ordered them to return illegal gains amounting to a whopping ₹546 crores, which is quite a surprise to the online trading education industry.
Avadhut Sathe grew his business on a very straightforward and somewhat misleading idea: instruct retail investors on how to trade stocks and make money in a consistent manner. Via ASTAPL, Sathe and his team organized stock market training programs that looked lawful and proper. Nevertheless, SEBI's 125-page interim order exposes a deeply disturbing fact behind the facade.
Probe revealed that even though Sathe never registered with SEBI as an investment advisor or research analyst as required by law, he was definitely providing directional advice on buying and selling specific securities to his course participants and was charging them hefty fees.
Report suggests academy earned a whopping ₹601.37 crores from over 3.37 lakh investors between July 2017 and October 2025 thus the scale of this operation highlights the extent to which digital platforms and social media have facilitated unregistered influencers in bypassing regulatory supervision and going directly to the most vulnerable retail traders.
The reason that this is a particularly bad case is that the perpetrators deliberately tampered with the evidence. The investigation into fiscal year 2023-24 found that Sathe and his team strategically selected the profitable trades to be shown and at the same time carefully left out the losing ones.
They made good use of the videos of successful participants to promote the training programs accompanied by the promise of consistently high returns which is a typical bait-and-switch technique used for luring more investors into the fold.
The person who came up with the entire scheme was none other than Avadhut Sathe while his wife, Gouri Avadhut Sathe, assisted in the daily tasks. More importantly though, Gouri was not seen giving any advisory or research services, she was merely the face of what was basically an unregistered advisory operation behind the scenes.
After realizing the danger that the case posed to retail investors, SEBI did not waste time in taking temporary measures. The regulator has declared a lifetime ban against both Sathe as well as ASTAPL prohibiting them from participating in the securities market.
Furthermore, they are ordered to stop any unregistered advisory activities; they are not allowed to use live trading data for any purpose and performance metrics or profits of them or their participants are also not to be advertised.
It is online trading advisory fraud-related enforcement actions where this ₹546.16 crore disgorgement order is most remarkable. The figure is the total illicit gain from the fraudulent scheme which is the money that will be recovered and possibly given back to the victims.
This enforcement action is a very good example of the fact that you cannot fully rely on online celebrities who promise you assured trading returns and are mostly beyond the regulator's reach. Real investment advisors are registered with SEBI, comply with the code of conduct, and keep proper records.
The Avadhut Sathe case makes clear that even advisory services that appear to be sophisticated may turn out to be unregistered conspiracies like Ponzi schemes.
For retail traders, the lesson is crystal clear: check credentials, do not believe high-return promises, and take registered advisors who are under the regulator's supervision seriously.
