जगत उद्यम The Startup Atlas › एशिया Asia
Zerodha
Bengaluru, India · Founded 2010 · Fintech · Stockbroking · Founders: Nithin Kamath, Nikhil Kamath
The one lesson
Charge a flat price for the honest version, and let profit fund growth instead of investors.
Indian brokers charged a percentage of every trade. Zerodha charged a flat fee, then nothing at all for long-term equity investing, and grew into one of India’s largest brokers without venture capital.
- ₹4,237 cr Profit, FY25 — On ₹8,847 crore of revenue.
- ₹22,679 cr Cash and bank balances — About $2.5 billion, March 2025.
- 7.26 M Active clients — About 15.8% of the market. NSE data via Entrackr.
- ₹0 Brokerage on equity delivery — Since 2015. Flat fee up to ₹20 elsewhere.
The story
Nithin Kamath had traded for years before he built a broker. In August 2010 he and his brother Nikhil started a brokerage in Bengaluru and called it Zerodha: zero plus rodha, the Sanskrit for barrier.
The brokers of the time charged a percentage of the value of every trade, so the more a customer traded the more the broker earned, whether or not the customer did. Zerodha charged a flat fee per order of up to ₹20 regardless of size. In 2015 it went further and stopped charging brokerage on equity delivery trades altogether: the long-term investor paid nothing.
It built its own trading platform and a free education site called Varsity. The brothers bootstrapped it, and in 2014 they started Rainmatter to back other founders in the same mould.
In the year to March 2025 Zerodha earned ₹4,237 crore in profit on ₹8,847 crore of revenue and held ₹22,679 crore in cash and bank balances.
Why it worked
- A flat price told the customer the broker had no stake in making him trade more.
- Free delivery trades made Zerodha the default for the long-term investor, the most loyal customer there is.
- Profit from day one meant no investor could push it into the expensive growth tactics its rivals used.
What a founder in India can take
If your price structure rewards you when your customer loses, a competitor will one day point that out. Price so your incentive and your customer’s run the same way. And if the business can fund itself, the absence of investors is not a weakness. It is the freedom to keep the price honest.