Youtuber Ravindra Balu Bharti, his company ordered to pay Rs 9.5 crore by SEBI due to...

YouTuber Ravindra Balu Bharti and his company have come into trouble. Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) has prohibited them from participating in the securities market until April 4, 2025.  

Sebi took the action as Ravindra Balu Bharti and Ravindra Bharti Education Institute duped many naive investors through his unregistered investment advisory business. The security and commodity market regulatory body has fined them Rs 9.5 crore which they earned from illegal activities by violating the law.  

Sebi observed in its order that the institute made use of unregistered investment advice, trade recommendations, and execution. This was done to attract naive investors to invest in the securities market through its premises and employees. 

How Bharti and his company duped investors 

Ravindra Bharti is a very popular youtuber whose two popular YouTube channels have a combined 19 lakh subscribers. He used his social media personality as a YouTube influencer to attract his followers to invest in risky areas. He lured his followers through his company by marketing “high returns” to investors, who believed his claims of high profits from the stock market. However, the company was illegally giving advise to investors as it was not even registered with Sebi.  

As a matter of fact, Ravindra Bharti and Ravindra Bharti Education Institute gave erratic advise and even sold various investment plans to a single person and washed their minds to such level so that they could not decide on their own and were made to believe all advises Bharti and his team gave. More importantly, Bharti and his institute did not warn of any risks involved in the investments and did not reveal complete financial disclosures. 

This trapped the investors who were unaware of the results of their actions and were left helpless in cases of big losses.  

What Ravindra Bharti and his institute did? 

Sebi found that Bharti’s company deployed tricks to mislead investors and sold wrong “expert advise” to those clients who wanted to make quick money. Bharti Institute violated securities laws and failed in fulfilling fiduciary duties, meaning fulfilling duties in the best interests of one’s clients. Ravindra Bharti and Ravindra Bharti Education Institute have to pay Rs 9.5 crore, the amount they made from this scam and also a penalty and interest charges. 

Sebi has barred Bharti and his institute from offering any advises on investments as long as they are unregistered with the regulatory body. It has put an additional penalty of Rs 10 lakh on Bharti and his associates.