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founded in 2010 by brothers Nithin on advertising. to do well, you need local residents
and Nikhil Kamath. Hence the to put their money in the market.
name Zerodha; it comes from the Building a Community The money shouldn’t just stay
words ‘zero’ and ‘rodha’, the latter The focus on building a community in fixed deposits and real estate.
Sanskrit for obstructions. helped because initial skepticism I want to encourage people to
educate themselves and put the
towards Zerodha’s discount
Nithin Kamath: Setting Foot into the Industry broking model stemmed from the money in the ecosystem in some
way or the other to drive growth.
Zerodha brought many firsts in
fact that retail investors, who are
India’s broking industry when it
they should or sell, were not
entered the market in 2010. It is often clueless about what stocks Our Work Paid Off
India’s first ‘discount brokerage’ offered any research services. Our work has finally paid off as
Co-Founder & CEO of Zerodha firm. A discount broker is different we dethroned long-time market
from a full-service broker in that To counter this, Zerodha launched leader ICICI Securities to become
Varsity, a learning module, which
it does not offer research services the largest brokerage firm in India,
to its client, such as buy or sell has become immensely popular. It with nearly 8.47 lakh active clients.
recommendations. The cost it also runs TradingQ&A, an active The platform sees two to three
forum were traders and investors,
saves by not having a full-fledged can discuss stock ideas. Then there million trades every day which
research team, it passes on to is ‘Z Connect’ an interactive blog. makes it the largest retail brokerage
customers via a low brokerage. firm across the world. It adds
How We Are Different From Nithin invested in a lot of 50,000 to 75,000 accounts every
month.
Other Brokerages tech start-ups in a hope to
make relations with budding
Zerodha applied a flat fee of Rs 20 technologists. Website: http://www.zerodha.com
for every trade, irrespective of its Past, Present & the Future Industry: Financial Services
size with no brokerage fee, which Company size: 501-1,000
was deemed as quite disruptive Over time, Zerodha has used
by experts at that time in the technology heavily to differentiate employees
market. Compared to that, other itself. Its trading platform Kite on Headquarters: Bangalore,
“
brokerages used to typically charge web and mobile accounts for more Karnataka
a percentage of the traded amount. than 10 percent of all retail trading Type: Privately Held
turnover in India. It recently
The startup kicked off with a team
of five people, which has now gone launched Coin, an online platform Founded: 2010
up to an employee count of nearly to buy direct mutual funds. Specialties: Online Trading,
1,300 today. It has also invested in a host of Financial Networking &
promising financial technology Knowledge Center, Stock Trading,
Credibility and transparency are startups. These include Smallcase, Commodity Trading, Currency
crucial for any financial services which allows thematic investing Trading, Discount Broking, and
business. It took a long time, it was
a slow transition that happened – for instance, it offers you a Fintech
readymade portfolio of companies
over the last eight years. In expected to benefit from the
our first year, we opened 3,000 electric vehicle revolution. Or
Our work has
accounts. When the cost of any Sensibull, an options trading “
product or service is less, people finally paid off
automatically question the quality. platform.
That was a big challenge for us Next for the brand is the aim to
right from the start. We were able add 5-10 million new investors to long-time market
to build a community around us, the Indian market. “India is very
which helped in the long run. Even dependent on foreign capital to leader ICICI
today we don’t spend any money drive the country. For any country Securities
as we dethroned “
│September 2019 43
