Confidential — internal only

Private document repository · Folio KP-6968158

Working Ledger
Karan Puri

A running record of regulatory registrations, professional history, the Ambala distribution setup, and the operating doctrine that governs it. Every line carries a source tag. Nothing here is inferred without being marked as inference.

Holder
Karan Puri
CRD number
6968158
Base
Ambala, Haryana
Ledger opened
01 Aug 2026
Revision
r1 — open
A / 01

Identity & jurisdiction

Two separate regulatory universes sit in this file. Keeping them apart is the first discipline of the ledger.

A-01Karan PuriName as it appears on the FINRA BrokerCheck report.Primary
A-02CRD# 6968158Central Registration Depository number. Issued and maintained by FINRA in the United States.Primary
A-03Public record URL — brokercheck.finra.org/individual/summary/6968158Free public lookup. No login. Updates typically appear the next business day.Primary
A-04Operating base: Ambala, Haryana, IndiaRecorded from your own brief; distinct from the New York and London registrations below.As supplied
Ledger correction — A-05

Your brief recorded this as a “SEBI registration CRD number.” It is not. CRD is FINRA’s Central Registration Depository, a United States system operated by the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority under SEC oversight. SEBI does not issue CRD numbers and has no visibility into this record.

Kept as a standing correction because the two identities in this file are easy to blur: CRD 6968158 is your US broker record; ARN / APRN numbers are the Indian distribution credentials in Folio E. A US CRD confers no authority whatsoever to distribute financial products in India, and vice versa.

B / 02

US regulatory record — FINRA BrokerCheck

Source: BrokerCheck report for CRD# 6968158, © 2026 FINRA. All entries in this folio are drawn directly from that document.

B-01Current status: not registeredStated three times in the report — summary page, qualifications page, and registrations section.Primary
B-02Disclosure events: noneNo customer complaints, arbitrations, regulatory actions, terminations, bankruptcies, or criminal/civil proceedings disclosed. A clean record.Primary
B-03Professional designations: 0 reportedOnly designations declared under Question 8 of Form U4 and verified by the issuing body appear here.Primary
B-04Other business activities: none reportedReported only while registered. The Ambala setup in Folio E post-dates the last registration, so its absence here is expected.Primary

Registration history

Firms with which the broker was registered
DatesFirmCRD#BranchSpan
01/2022 – 04/2024BNP Paribas Securities Corp.15794New York, NY~2 yr 3 mo
08/2018 – 02/2022Barclays Capital Inc.19714New York, NY~3 yr 6 mo
Reading note — B-05

Registration ends April 2024. Under FINRA rules, qualification examinations generally remain valid for two years after a registration terminates, with a longer window available only through the Maintaining Qualifications Program if enrolled at the time of termination. On the face of the dates alone, the ordinary two-year window ran to roughly April 2026.

Marked as inference from the dates, not a statement from the report. If re-registration in the US is ever on the table, this is the first fact to check, not the last.

C / 03

Examinations passed

Zero principal/supervisory exams. Two general industry exams. One state securities law exam.

Securities industry examinations — CRD 6968158
ExamCategoryDateWhat it authorises
Uniform Securities Agent State Law ExaminationSeries 6305 Jul 2018State-level blue-sky law; required by most US states alongside a FINRA rep registration.
General Securities Representative ExaminationSeries 724 Aug 2018The core representative licence — solicitation, purchase and sale of most securities products.
Securities Industry Essentials ExaminationSIE01 Oct 2018Foundational knowledge exam; a co-requisite to the Series 7 under the post-2018 structure.
Principal / supervisoryNoneNo supervisory registration held. Relevant if a supervisory role is ever contemplated.
Why the dates look out of order — C-05

The SIE is dated after the Series 7, which reads like an error but is not. FINRA restructured its representative-level exams effective 1 October 2018, splitting foundational content into the new SIE. Everyone already registered on that date was credited with the SIE automatically, dated to the launch day.

So the sequence is 63 → 7 → industry-wide restructure. Worth remembering: it is the single most misread line on the whole report.

D / 04

Employment history

As self-reported on the most recent Form U4. FINRA warns explicitly that an end date of “Present” is frozen at the moment registration ceased and does not reflect current employment.

Ten-year employment record per Form U4
PeriodEmployerPositionInv. relatedLocation
01/2022 – “Present”BNPPSC (BNP Paribas Securities Corp.)TraderYNew York, NY, USA
09/2018 – 01/2022BarclaysDirectorYNew York, NY, USA
01/2014 – 09/2018BarclaysVice PresidentYLondon, United Kingdom
D-04Continuous investment-industry track from Jan 2014Ten-plus years across two global banks, on two continents, with no disclosure events. This is the substance of the professional record.Primary
D-05“Present” is a frozen fieldDo not cite BrokerCheck as evidence of current employment. FINRA disclaims it on the page itself.Primary
D-06London → New York → AmbalaSell-side trading seat to an owner-operated distribution practice. The doctrine in Folio G is the bridge between the two.Inference
E / 05

Invest Better Now — Ambala

The Indian side of the file. Registration numbers here are recorded as supplied and are marked pending independent verification against the AMFI and APMI registers.

E-01Invest Better Now — AMFI-registered mutual fund distribution practiceNot a company registered with the Ministry of Corporate Affairs. There is no CIN and no ROC filing trail attached to this name.As supplied
E-02ARN 331302 — AMFI Registration Number of the entityVerify at the AMFI “Locate a Mutual Fund Distributor” register before quoting externally.As supplied
E-03Ravi Kumar Puri — ARN 156849Individual ARN of the associated certified professional.As supplied
E-04Ravi Kumar Puri — APMI APRN 08713Portfolio Management Services distributor registration. See Folio F for what this permits and when it became mandatory.As supplied
E-05Premises — Behind Domino’s, Model Town / Prem Nagar Road, Vikas Vihar, Ambala City 134003, HaryanaListed publicly on JustDial; rated 5.0 across a small number of reviews.Third party
E-06Web presence — investbetternow.inSite is client-side rendered; disclosure pages did not return static text on fetch. Registration numbers could not be read off the live site and were not confirmed there.Unverified
Structural consequence — E-07

Because the practice sits on individual and entity ARNs rather than an incorporated body, the legal person carrying the obligations is the proprietor, not a company. Practical effects worth holding in mind: liability is unlimited and personal; income is taxed in the individual’s hands; there is no share capital and therefore no clean instrument for bringing in a partner; and continuity depends entirely on the ARN holder.

This is not a criticism — it is precisely the lowest-overhead structure available, and it matches the doctrine in Folio G exactly. It is recorded here so the trade-off stays visible rather than becoming invisible through habit.

F / 06

Indian regulatory framework — reference notes

General public-domain context, not statements about this file. Kept here so the numbers in Folio E mean something when you return to them.

F-01ARN — AMFI Registration NumberIssued by the Association of Mutual Funds in India. Mandatory to distribute mutual funds. Obtained after clearing the NISM Series V-A certification and completing AMFI registration formalities. Time-limited and renewable.Context
F-02EUIN — Employee Unique Identification NumberMaps an individual sales person to an ARN holder, so the person who actually advised on a transaction is identifiable on the application form.Context
F-03APRN — APMI Registration NumberIssued by the Association of Portfolio Managers in India. Required to distribute Portfolio Management Services. Prerequisite: NISM Series XXI-A, PMS Distributors certification.Context
F-04SEBI circular of 2 May 2024Made APMI registration mandatory for anyone distributing PMS, effective 1 January 2025. APMI had run the registration portal on a voluntary basis before that.Context
F-05The commission-withholding windowSEBI directed portfolio managers to withhold commission on new assets from NISM-certified distributors who had not yet obtained an APRN, from 1 Jan 2025 until registration or 31 Jul 2025. Non-registrants past that date could not be paid and could not source new business.Context
F-06Distributor ≠ adviserAn ARN/APRN holder distributes products. Charging a client a fee for investment advice is a separate SEBI Registered Investment Adviser registration with its own qualification, net-worth and compliance obligations. The line between the two is the most consequential boundary in the Indian retail market.Context
Standing caution — F-07

Regulatory positions move. Every entry in this folio should be treated as accurate as of the ledger date in the footer and re-checked against the SEBI, AMFI and APMI sources before being relied on for a decision. This ledger is a memory aid, not a compliance opinion.

G / 07

Operating doctrine

Recorded verbatim from your brief in the left column. The right column is my reading of what each principle buys and what it costs — offered as a working annotation for you to overwrite, not as a verdict.

G-01Hire no one.Buys / costsZero payroll, zero supervision liability, zero attrition. Ceiling equals your own hours. Every growth decision becomes a leverage decision, not a headcount one.
G-02Use existing setups.Buys / costsSomeone else has paid for the infrastructure, the licence, the office. You inherit their constraints along with their capacity.
G-03Build on top of what’s available.Buys / costsSpeed, and capital preserved. The layer you add is the only thing you truly own — so it has to be the layer that carries the relationship.
G-04Bring clients that pay and sustain the network.Buys / costsThe only intake filter that matters. A client who does not sustain the network is a cost centre wearing a revenue label.
G-05Keep overheads minimal.Buys / costsA low break-even means you can refuse business. That refusal is the real asset — it is what keeps G-04 honest.
G-06Retain what you can, let go what wants to leave.Buys / costsNo energy spent on recovery campaigns. Risk: churn goes unexamined, and the reason people leave stops being information.
G-07Don’t go behind clients. Let them reach you.Buys / costsInbound arrivals are pre-qualified and negotiate less. Growth is then bounded by reputation and referral, which compound slowly and then suddenly.
G-08Don’t call them. Let the client initiate the conversation and build on top of it.Buys / costsEvery conversation starts from the client’s own stated need. Note the tension with servicing duties — a periodic review is not a sales call, and silence can read as absence.
G-09Minimal interaction keeps the unnecessary communication to minimum.Buys / costsAttention protected, signal-to-noise high. Guard against the failure mode where necessary communication gets classified as unnecessary.
Observation — G-10

The doctrine is internally coherent: G-01, G-02, G-03 and G-05 all keep fixed costs near zero, which is what makes G-04, G-06 and G-07 affordable. You can only decline business and let clients walk if your break-even is low enough that you do not need them. The overhead discipline is the load-bearing element; the rest is downstream of it.

The single point of failure is that the doctrine has no answer to what happens when you are unavailable. G-01 makes that structurally unsolvable within the current setup. Recorded, not resolved.

H / 08

Verification queue

Open items. Tick them off in this file as they are confirmed, and move the entry’s tag from “as supplied” to “verified”.

I / 09

Recall check

Answer before you open each line. If one doesn’t come, the folio reference next to the answer takes you straight back to it — no searching.

Which regulator issues a CRD number, and which one does not?

FINRA issues it, in the United States. SEBI does not, and has no CRD system at all. → Folio A-05

What are the three exams passed, and in what order?

Series 63 (Jul 2018), Series 7 (Aug 2018), SIE (Oct 2018). Zero principal exams. → Folio C

Why is the SIE dated after the Series 7?

FINRA restructured representative exams on 1 Oct 2018. Already-registered reps were credited with the SIE automatically, dated to the launch day. → Folio C-05

Two firms, two CRD numbers — which is which?

BNP Paribas Securities Corp. is 15794 (Jan 2022 – Apr 2024). Barclays Capital Inc. is 19714 (Aug 2018 – Feb 2022). → Folio B

Why can’t BrokerCheck be cited as proof of current employment?

The employment end date freezes at the point registration ceased. “Present” means “present as of the last U4 filing,” not today. FINRA states this on the page. → Folio D-05

ARN versus APRN — what is each one for?

ARN, from AMFI, for distributing mutual funds. APRN, from APMI, for distributing portfolio management services. Different bodies, different certifications, different registers. → Folio F-01, F-03

From what date did APRN registration become mandatory, and on what authority?

1 January 2025, under the SEBI circular of 2 May 2024. Commissions on new assets were withheld from unregistered distributors from that date until 31 July 2025. → Folio F-04, F-05

What is the load-bearing principle in the operating doctrine?

Minimal overhead (G-05). A low break-even is what makes declining business and letting clients leave affordable. Every other rule sits on top of it. → Folio G-10

Why does “not a company under the MCA” matter in practice?

The proprietor carries the obligations personally: unlimited liability, income taxed individually, no share capital to bring in a partner, and continuity tied to the ARN holder. → Folio E-07

J / 10

Continuation sheet

Ruled rows for entries you add. Columns run: reference · entry · source tag. Keep the reference scheme — folio letter, then sequential number.

K-01
K-02
K-03
K-04
K-05
K-06
K-07
K-08

Sources of record for this revision: FINRA BrokerCheck report for CRD# 6968158 (© 2026 FINRA); brokercheck.finra.org; investbetternow.in; a public JustDial listing for the Ambala premises; SEBI’s circular of 2 May 2024 on APMI registration for PMS distributors as reported in the financial press; and your own written brief. Nothing in this document is legal, tax, compliance or investment advice, and registration details recorded as supplied have not been independently confirmed against the AMFI or APMI registers.