Money Mantra: In less than three years, we have reached 27000

Nithin Kamath Founder/CEO of Zerodha, talks to Money Mantra about Zerodha and growth of e-commerce in India.

CLIENTS Discount brokerage services are a popular concept in developed countries. Even some of the largest brokerage houses in the world are heavily into discount brokerage services and generate a high fraction of their revenue from this segment. However, the concept has not been popular in India and has started to gain popularity only now, as more and more people are getting used to online trading. In its short existance, has emerged as a pioneer brokerage organization in discount brokerage arena. Money Mantra spoke to Mr. Nithin Kamath, Founder CEO of Zerodha, to elicit his opinion on the operation of Zerodha, and about the e-commerce sector in India. Excerpts:

How did the idea of Zerodha come about and how did you decide on services that Zerodha could offer?

I started trading at a very young age and have traded actively with many brokers for more than 12 years.

But I realized that there was a gap between what a brokerage firm offers and what a trader wants. This is when the idea of Zerodha was born, a brokerage firm that caters to online traders by having both the platform and support completely online. Since the support is completely online we could internationally be known as online discount broking, the idea behind which is that in today’s online world the cost of executing a trade doesn’t go up with the size of the trade.

What are the major offerings of Zerodha and what are its USPs as online trading platform? 

We are members of all the major exchanges – NSE, BSE, MCX-SX, MCX and NCDEX. We provide our customers with trading/demat accounts to trade on all of these exchanges. Our major differentiation is our pricing, we charge a flat fee of Rs 20/trade irrespective of the size of the trade. There is no commitment required from the client in terms of minimum turnover/contract note charges, software fees or any kind of upfront brokerage. And since we have a single plan for all our clients, we can be completely transparent about our business online and hence also provide much more efficient support.

Visit this link to read the complete article.