QuantDesk

Onboarding

Getting started

You'll open a broking account in your own name, then give the desk permission to place orders in it. At no point do you send us your password.

Your time
About 20 minutes, spread over the steps below
Waiting on the broker
1–2 days for KYC approval
Cost to open
₹0 at Shoonya

Before you begin

This is invite-only, and everyone starts in paper mode — simulated trades on real market data. Nothing real happens to your money until you decide it should, and that decision is a switch on your own dashboard.

Please read the risk disclosure first. You can lose money, including all of it.

What you'll need to hand

  • PAN card
  • Aadhaar, with the mobile number linked to it (the OTP goes there)
  • Bank account details — account number and IFSC
  • A cancelled cheque or bank statement
  • A signature on plain white paper, photographed
  • Your selfie / photo for in-person verification
  • Income proof — only if you want F&O enabled (a payslip, ITR or a 6-month bank statement)
  1. IOpen a Shoonya account
  2. IIFund it — but only what you intend to risk
  3. IIIGet your API credentials
  4. IVSend us four things — and nothing else
  5. VAuthorise the desk
  6. VIWatch it in paper mode
  7. VIIGoing live is your switch

At the broker

Entirely in your own account, on Shoonya's site. We are not involved in any of it and cannot do it for you.

Open a Shoonya account

10 minutes, then 1–2 days of waiting

Shoonya is Finvasia's platform. Account opening is free (₹0), and it is the broker this software integrates with.

Open an account at prism.shoonya.com →

Complete the KYC with the documents above. Verification usually takes a day or two. You'll receive a client ID (your user ID) by email when it's approved — keep that message.

A capture of the Shoonya registration form goes here, taken during the first supervised onboarding. We don't draw broker screens ourselves — an invented one would be wrong the day they redesign, and this is a page about not being fooled by things that look official.

Fund it — but only what you intend to risk

A few minutes, once KYC clears

Add money from the bank account you registered. Start with an amount whose total loss would not change your life. You can always add more later; you cannot un-lose money.

Get your API credentials

About 5 minutes

Algorithmic access needs a developer key. It's free and takes a minute.

Where prism.shoonya.com ▸ profile menu ▸ API Key

  1. Log in at prism.shoonya.com with your client ID.
  2. Open the profile menu and choose API Key.
  3. Copy the API Key, the Vendor Code, and the Secret.
  4. Whitelist our server's IP address. Shoonya ties an API key to one address and refuses calls from anywhere else, so this step is not optional — without it your key will simply be rejected and nothing will trade. Enter:

    140.245.226.243

A capture of the API Key page goes here. Until it does, the path above is the whole instruction — it is three clicks from the profile menu.

Why we give you an IP rather than ask for one

The whitelist is a lock on your account that only you can set, and it is worth understanding what it buys you: even if our credentials for your account were stolen outright, they would be useless from anywhere but that one machine.

It cuts both ways, and you should know the trade: if we ever move servers, your key stops working until you update this, and we will tell you the new address ourselves. Nobody else should ever ask you to change it. A request to add an unfamiliar IP to your broking account is exactly what taking over an account looks like — check with us first, on a channel you already trust.

The handover

The only two steps where anything passes between us. Read the block in step IV before you send anything at all.

Send us four things — and nothing else

2 minutes

Reply to your invitation with:

1

Client ID

Your Shoonya user ID.

2

Vendor Code

From the API Key page.

3

API Key

From the API Key page.

4

Secret

From the API Key page.

Do not send us these — we don't want them

  • Your trading password. Never. We have no use for it, and asking for it is what a scam looks like.
  • Your TOTP / 2FA seed. Not needed. It would hand over permanent control of your account, so it is off by default and only ever collected if you explicitly ask for unattended re-login.
  • Your bank or card details. We never touch your money.

If anyone — including someone claiming to be us — asks for your password or 2FA seed, refuse, and tell us.

Authorise the desk

2 minutes — and this is the clever bit

We'll send you a one-time link. It goes to Shoonya's own login page, not ours.

  1. Open the link. Check the address bar says shoonya.com.
  2. Log in there with your own password and 2FA. We never see either.
  3. Shoonya redirects you to a page with a code= value in the address bar.
  4. Send that code back to us. It's single-use and short-lived.

We exchange it for an access token. That token is what lets the desk place orders — and you can revoke it from your Shoonya account at any time, without asking us, which instantly stops any further trading.

This is the same mechanism that lets you connect an app to Google or Facebook without handing over your password. It is also what SEBI's algorithmic trading rules require, so it isn't optional for us either.

A capture of Shoonya's authorisation screen goes here. The one thing to check on it is the address bar, and that is worth checking on the real screen rather than against a picture of one.

On your dashboard

From here everything is a control you hold, and nothing moves without you pressing it.

Watch it in paper mode

As long as you like

We provision your private desk and send you a dashboard link and login. It starts in paper mode. From there you can see positions, cash, P&L and a decision log explaining every action it took and why, plus a daily report by email.

Stay in paper as long as you like. We'd rather you saw it have a bad week before you go live — we earn the same either way.

Going live is your switch

Whenever you decide, and not before

When you're ready, you enable live trading on your own dashboard and set the capital you're allocating. Not us. You can pause, stop, or leave at any moment.

Optional: alerts to your phone

The desk can message you when something needs attention — a failed exit, an expired session, an unusual position. Email works out of the box. For Telegram, message @BotFather, create a bot, and send us the token and your chat ID.

If something goes wrong

  • KYC rejected — usually a mismatch between PAN and Aadhaar names, or a blurred document. Shoonya's support will say which.
  • No API Key option in Prism — the trading account must be fully active first. Wait for the approval email.
  • Your key is rejected and nothing trades — almost always the IP whitelist in step III. Check the address matches exactly, digit for digit.
  • The authorisation link expired — they are short-lived on purpose. Ask us for another.
  • You want out, right now — revoke access in Shoonya and email us. See refunds & cancellation; we never sell your holdings on our own initiative.

Stuck anywhere? Email and we'll walk you through it.