PR Sundar settles SEBI advisory case, to not deal with securities for a year; check details

Finfluencer PR Sundar, his company Mansun Consulting and co-promoter of the company Mangayarkarasi Sundar have settled with the capital markets regulator and agreed to return the advisory fee, following complaints that they were providing investment advisory services without the requisite registration from the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi).

The three parties have agreed to refrain from buying, selling or otherwise dealing in securities for one year from the passing of the settlement order to disgorge more than ₹6 crore, which includes profit earned from advisory services and interest on the profit.

Also Read: Trading income is one part of my business: PR Sundar

“Upon examination, it was observed that Applicant no. 2 (PR Sundar) was running the website www.prsundar.blogspot.com through which he was offering various packages for providing advisory services. The fees collected in lieu of the services were received via a payment gateway linked to the bank account of Applicant no. 1, Mansun Consultancy Pvt. Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as ‘Mansun/ company’) held with ICICI Bank Ltd,” stated the settlement order.

Passed on May 25, the settlement order recorded the settlement amount of over ₹15 lakh had to be paid by each, totalling to Rs. 46,80,000; and a disgorgement amount of over ₹6 crore.

Sebi had received various complaints that the Chennai-based social media finfluencer was running the website www.prsundar.blogspot.com through which he was offering various packages for providing the advisory services. 

The fees collected in lieu of the services were received via a payment gateway linked to the bank account of Mansun Consultancy held with ICICI Bank. Upon the inquiry, Mansun submitted a list of recommendations provided by it for the month of January 2021. After analyzing the sample of such recommendations, Sebi observed that the recommendations are related to purchasing, selling, and dealing in securities which were communicated to the clients.

After receiving the tip off and conducting its analysis, the market regulator sent a showcause notice to all three entities on May 17, 2022, and a supplementary showcase notice on November 8, 2022, with various observations.

According to reports, Sundar is the owner of a Mercedes Benz S Class and a Jaguar. He lives in a four-storeyed penthouse worth ₹30 crore in Tamil Nadu. He started stock market trading in 2007 and has close to five lakh followers on Twitter. He was known to regularly put out explainer videos of options trading on his YouTube channel, which garnered lakhs of views. 

Over the years, Sundar’s trading capital had soared to over ₹50 crore with the trader claiming to have made a profit of ₹20 crore last year from trading and other ventures. Last year, his firm, Mansun Consultancy was listed under the Cause List pertaining to 'examination of unregistered investment advisory'.

Sundar had also been accused of posting screenshots of only his profitable positions and faking or deleting the screenshots when trades went against him.