Announcing ipoalerts

Every product has a story behind it, and ipoalerts is no exception. What began as a weekend experiment in 2021 has evolved into a robust service now powering financial apps, all built to address a simple yet common problem.

A Brief History

In early 2021, with India experiencing an IPO boom, many casual investors were eager to participate. Yet, even for the most enthusiastic, it was easy to miss crucial application windows. While there were plenty of online brokers and financial websites, none offered a reliable, timely alert system for upcoming IPOs. This gap in the market led to the creation of ipoalerts—a service designed to notify subscribers via email about IPOs, making it easier for investors to stay on top of these time-sensitive opportunities.

The first iteration of ipoalerts launched within just one weekend. Despite its simplicity, it quickly gained attention from investors looking for a solution. Over time, the service grew, offering increasingly detailed alerts that became indispensable for staying updated on IPO activity. At its peak, over 200 subscribers received timely notifications on key IPO milestones.

Here’s a glimpse of what the landing page and digest emails looked like in those early days:

Challenges along the way

Despite its initial success, the service faced two major challenges. First, while emails were sent on time, only a fraction of users opened them when it mattered most. Open rates were below 5% on the day the emails were sent, indicating that the service wasn’t reaching users when they needed it most.

Secondly, the cost of maintaining the service began to outweigh its value. Consideration was given to moving from emails to WhatsApp notifications to get closer to users, but the costs associated with using the WhatsApp Business API were prohibitive at the time.

A new direction

After the email digests were sunset in 2021, the assets behind ipoalerts remained intact. The API and documentation, although in a primitive state, were still available. Fast forward to 2024, developers began reaching out for access to IPO data, highlighting a new demand for the service.

This shift in interest led to a pivot. ipoalerts transformed from a simple notification system into a fully functional IPO API, enabling apps and services to integrate IPO data seamlessly. Key features like rate limiting, access control, API key authentication, and response caching were implemented, ensuring the API is production-ready for developers.

Now, it’s easier than ever to onboard apps to ipoalerts. Through a self-serve flow on Discord, developers can generate an API key and start integrating IPO data within minutes—without the need for manual intervention.

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This journey, from a weekend project to a fully developed API SaaS, has been both challenging and rewarding. ipoalerts now stands as a comprehensive solution, supporting not just individual investors but also developers aiming to enhance their own products with real-time IPO data.

Visit ipoalerts.in to learn more and access the API. The ongoing support and feedback from the community have shaped what ipoalerts is today, and the future holds even more exciting developments.

Stay tuned for further updates, and as always, happy investing!