Prathamesh DharmarajaVerified
IQC 2026 India National Finals winner, IQC Global Finalist
🇮🇳India· Mumbai
Start before you feel ready. Competitions themselves are the fastest way to learn.
Prathamesh Dharmaraja is a student at the Indian Institute of Technology Madras, pursuing a BTech in Naval Architecture and Ocean Engineering, and a Research Consultant at WorldQuant since May 2026. His interest in quantitative research grew out of a fascination with applying mathematical and statistical thinking to messy, real-world problems like markets. His first serious exposure to the field came through IMC Prosperity, where, according to Prathamesh, his team finished 39th nationally.
In the International Quant Championship 2026, Prathamesh and his teammates Ravi Charan, Tisha Hirani and Siddhesh Kamble, competing as Team Smoooth Operator, went through two preliminary rounds and won the India National Finals. Before the final presentation, the team ranked in the top 3 nationally on out-of-sample performance but sat 8th on the overall leaderboard, and had to win the judges over by defending their approach like researchers, not just presenting numbers. Read Ravi's interview here.
The team will represent India at the IQC Global Finals on October 6 and 7. Prathamesh names Jim Simons as his main inspiration and believes the most underrated skill in quant trading is intellectual honesty: the discipline to kill your own idea when the data tells you to.
Interview
Tell us a bit about yourself, how did you get into quantitative research and trading?
I am currently a student pursuing Naval Architecture and Ocean Engineering at IIT Madras, and my interest in quantitative research grew out of a fascination with how mathematical and statistical thinking can be applied to messy, real-world problems like markets. My first serious exposure to the field was through IMC Prosperity, a trading simulation competition, where my team finished 39th nationally. That experience was truly enriching, and that's what convinced me to pursue the field of Quantitative Finance.
What pushed you and your team to take part in IQC 2026?
We initially learned about this competition through a programme on campus and found it interesting, so we decided to take part in it.
How many stages did you go through before winning the India National Finals?
We went through two preliminary rounds before reaching the National Finals. Winning the Finals after that progression made the result feel earned rather than incidental, every round raised the difficulty and narrowed the field.
What was the toughest moment on the way to winning the National Finals?
The toughest moment came right before the Finals presentation. Despite ranking in the top 3 nationally on out-of-sample performance, we found ourselves sitting 8th on the leaderboard for the overall score, a gap that didn't reflect the strength of our underlying strategy, but still put real pressure on us heading into the final round.
That gap changed how we approached everything from that point on. Every remaining decision, how we structured our presentation, which results we chose to highlight, how we explained our reasoning to the judges, had to be deliberate. We couldn't just present numbers; we had to make a case for why our approach was robust despite where we stood on the board. It pushed us to think less like competitors chasing a rank and more like researchers defending a thesis, which in hindsight was exactly the shift that helped us stand out.
