Commoditising and democratising investment technology

December 10, 2015

Over the last two years, we at Zerodha have been relentlessly working on building good homegrown technology, and we’ve brought to you, our flagship products Q/Quant, Kite, and numerous other tools and enhancements. However, from a larger perspective, very little innovation happens in the Indian fintech industry compared to industries such as e-commerce and retail, food, transport etc., despite financial services being a crucial part of the economy. This is not a hard question to ponder given the large number of regulations, financial, and bureaucratic barriers one has to overcome to enter, especially in capital markets. A fintech startup wanting to promote investments to the masses cannot even start out with such an idea without getting a broking license. Given the state of affairs and the lack of innovation, how can the capital markets be expected to grow to be on par with developed markets?

Enter Kite.trade

Kite.trade is an ecosystem of pluggable financial technologies that we’re bringing to the market to make investment/trade/execution capabilities available to developers where implementations can be as simple as plugging in social media buttons. With this, we aim to commoditise and democratise investments and attract a new breed of financial technology startups and products that are not nipped in the bud by the aforementioned barriers and red tapes. We’re pioneering, perhaps for the first time, the idea of Broking as a Service. The entire broking infrastructure and end-to-end broking, from the paperwork, account opening and KYC, to stock market connectivity and execution, abstracted into a set of easy to use APIs. Imagine a pluggable investment gateway like a payment gateway on e-commerce portals.

Kite Connect is a set of REST-like APIs that expose many capabilities required to build a complete investment and trading platform. Execute orders in real time, manage user portfolio, stream live market data (WebSockets), and more, with the simple HTTP API collection.

Kite Publisher: With a few lines of HTML and Javascript, embed trade buttons on your website (and mobile apps), to allow visitors to execute trades with just a few clicks. For example, a blog post about a listed company can have a trade button that’ll allow readers to buy the company’s shares right from within the blog. Kite Publisher comes with a revenue sharing model for executed trades.

Less than 0.1% of the Indian population actively participate in capital markets. Here’s to hoping that our vision will inspire a host of developers to try and spot the opportunities in the other untapped 99.9%!

To know more and connect with us, please visit kite.trade



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130 comments
  1. pradeep patil says:

    GM sir I ask sum queris at 11.00pm last night . but u do not answer my queries .

  2. shishir says:

    Hi, My stock portfolio is older than 1year but the returns are being displayed on absolute basis. can you please display my returns in CAGR ?

  3. Raja Rajan says:

    Can we take demat delivery of commodities futures by mark for delivery contract in the zerodha equity demat account???

  4. garg10may says:

    Can I use it to execute Option spreads and make my various strategies. Will this lessen my margins?

  5. nishant says:

    Please start NCDEX trading also

  6. nag says:

    Thank you sir.

  7. nag says:

    Sir, how can I delete scripts in kite

  8. Satyabrata Pal says:

    Sir,
    How can sell T1 holding without touching holding share ( same equity) in mobile trading platform?

  9. Ishwar M. says:

    Hi,

    Could you please provide a separate URL which we could use to allow our application users to only register (not login) for a new trading account with you in case they don’t have one?

    This URL could also show the current charges and benefits of opening a Zerodha account, so that we don’t have to maintain / update it from our side whenever there are any changes to it.

    Thanks,
    Ishwar.

    • Ishwar M. says:

      Additionally, some way where partners can offer a promotion (like waiving off the account opening charges) when new users open an account through them, would be great!

  10. Bharath says:

    Thank Nitin Ji,

    How much commission % will be shared for Zerodha Publisher?

    • % sharing will be slab based. You will have to become a partner with us.

      • Bharath says:

        For example if a investor buy Equity or MF through my website but he already has an account with ZERODHA may be via other partners. Now who will get this commission?

        • In this case the commission would be shared between both the partners.

          • Rathnakara Hande says:

            I am a client of Zerodha already and have started filling references in “Q” page provided by your back office.
            If the person referred by me becomes a Zerodha client, am I eligible for profit sharing? If so what shall be the sharing basis?
            Is it necessary to fill the partnership form or/and pay Rs 1000/- additionally? Does it change profit sharing basis or an essential prerequisite for sharing profit?

            • Yes you can get 10% brokerage sharing from clients you have referred. Not required to fill partnership form if you are doing this just for a small bunch of people. If you are planning this full scale, then yeah partnership is the best way.

  11. Raj says:

    Once ZERODHA goes live on MUTUAL FUND, KITE Publisher will be available for Mutual Funds?

  12. Bharath says:

    Hi,

    Ignore my last post. I found those. Could you show Kite Publisher Button in some web page? So we can understand better how it works and etc

  13. Bharath says:

    Hi

    Could you provide documentation on KITE Publisher.

  14. sanjay_arora says:

    Feature Request:

    New trader on your platform. Would like two features one in trade analysis & one in PayIns:

    Trade Analysis:
    It should be possible to show the daily, weekly, monthly & annual drawdown/exposure, in totality of account and trading strategy/instrument wise and the same data should be downloadable via api. This will provide traders with information on the risk element on their wins and be more informed. I think the consolidated drawdown is already available to you as MTM exposure in trading tools, only they need to be stored for later querying.

    PayIns:
    Your inward RTGS PayIn seems to be very slow as you state 2 to 10 hours to get credited, in addition you seem to need the customer to upload a screenshot. A better method would be to get the customer to initiate the RTGS PayIn and generate a 10 or 15 digit hashcode and require the user to put his UserId & said hashcode in the comments section of the RTGS. Based on these matched with requested PayIn amount, you can automatically give trader the credit. Mismatched can go your usual route and credited delayed.

    Frankly, I distrust the payee end generated payment pages where the intended credit account number is not keyed in by the fund transferor, especially for the large amounts. A RTGS payee can be tested with a small amount beforehand and be at disposal forever, guaranteeing correct credit forever. The other kind of transfer always depends upon the trust that payee web-page has not been hacked and payment destinations in it not altered. In large payments, this is a risk that though minimal, should not be taken.

    Hope you can accomodate the above requests of value and provision them in near future.

  15. Satyabrata Pal says:

    How can I drag/drop in my Android app?

  16. Satyabrata Pal says:

    Can you please enable shorting (alphabetical) as other trading platformer like SBI Smart? It will be helpful for every one.
    Thanks.

  17. Satyabrata Pal says:

    Sir,
    I am a new customer. If there any facilaty to your android application to sequence stock name alphabetically in market watch.

  18. Balasaheb says:

    I want to transfar amount from my ac to zerodha for trading..I tried on trade .zerodha.com . When I went to fund transfer there is option select bank ac but when I slected on that its showing only select.not showing my ac..then I transfered through mobile bank 100/ it is not showing in my trading ac ..avaliable fund is xero..pls help me..

  19. punna reddy k says:

    Hi,
    sorting is available in marketwatch of kite?
    if not can you please enable sorting(alphabetical order), so that it will be easy to find the script in the list

    • Venu says:

      There’s no sorting available. We’ll let our developers know of your request.

      • Rathnakara Hande says:

        I am happy to have started using Kite. I trade both in equity and commodity. Is it possible to show the order status & position of commodity & equity separately?

        • Venu says:

          They all appear under the positions tab. I’ll bounce this feature request to the tech team.

          • Rathnakara Hande says:

            I wish to have a clarification on turnover calculations.
            If a buy &sell transaction of a specific commodity is done resulting in a gain of Rs 1000/- followed by another buy&sell transaction of the same commodity is done resulting in a loss of Rs 200/-, the net turnover shall be Rs 1200/- (as I understood from the chapter 7 of Zerodha Varsity).
            However as per the turnover statement given in the backoffice, it appears that the turnover against the above transaction amounts to Rs 800/- only.
            In first case, each buy&sell action is taken separately where as the buy and sell of all transactions of a specific commodity is averaged out in the second case.
            Please clarify which is the correct method.

  20. Arun Kumar says:

    Hi Nithin & Team,

    A wonderful effort and dedication I must say. Because of you guys (Zerodha team), I get the confidence to quit my job to become a full time trader now.

    But I see few obstacles in my way to become full time trader. I am an Intraday trader mainly focuses on Renko Chart and Technical Indicator and I would want few things to be available in Zerodha’s platform.

    1. Pi – Scanners based on Renko charts during market hours.
    2. Pi – Trade directly from Renko charts
    3. Pi – Backtest result based on Renko charts in Pi.
    4. Kite – Bracket and Cover order.
    5. Kite – Most of the time, Set range in Renko chart is not available for Currency charts and Commodity charts
    6. Kite – Volume should be available for Renko chart
    7. Kite – Trade directly from Renko charts
    8. Both Kite and Pi – As per Renko chart rules, once the new brick formed, it should not disappear. But in Kite as well as Pi, a new brick forms, then disappears if the price drops or increases . This produces false signal to entry or exit.
    9. Kite – A simple alert mechanism based on Price and technical indicators like in Tradingview.com
    10. Kite – Ltp on the full chart screen (Renko chart).

    As you can see, most of my logics and trade setup are based on Renko charts, I hope you would do few optimisation there based on my requested list in near future.

    Really admired your work!!

    Thanks in advance!!

    • GILARI says:

      I also support the request of Mr Arunkumar.Renko chart need tick data.But it is a distant dream in India.Zerodha Provide one minute data updating each second.If they can provide data with a time stamp of one second and back fill of one day intra data ,we could use renko and range bars successfully.

    • On Pi, you can create a renko strategy using expert advisor. You can then use it to backtest and on scanners. Let me see if I can get someone to write a sample strategy on Renko. I can see Renko work on commodity charts, doesn’t seem to be on currency (will have this checked). Volume on Renko charts is currently not possible, but hopefully soon. Bricks shouldn’t disappear once it is completely formed and next one has started plotting, I will get someone check this.
      Will try what best can be done, thanks.

      • GILARI says:

        On the last point,
        Renko bars are build on last value of current bar.Suppose the range of renko bar is 2 and the last minute candle opened at 100 and went up to 110 .Then 5 new renko bars are created.
        But if the current minute candle close at 102 ,all the renko bars from 102 to 110 disappeare
        There will remain one renko bar .

        • Omkar Dhavan says:

          As per my understanding of Renko Charts, it removes all clutter and time limitation of price movement. Renkos does not take time period in consideration at all. Once the brick is completely created it should not disappear.

  21. Aslam says:

    Please add sl in percentage also

  22. Ninja says:

    Hello,

    This is my first post on Z-connect. I have been using Zerodha from last 4-5 years and the experience is very good in comparison with any other big names in the industry. I am very much impressed by the variety of platforms available for trading as well as technical analysis like kite, Pi & zerodha trades.

    The only thing i am missing or request is if you can make bracket order or cover orders available on kite & Pi then It will be complete solution as for kite if a person is on the go then he will not be able to use bracket order.

    Hope you would look into this and we can have some good news on the same.

    Thank you for all the hard work and excellent long term services.

  23. TP says:

    Three questions-

    1) Should those trading shares as business( day or short term) must have a current account? For investors should savings account suffice?

    2) For investment above 1 lakh, is MAPIN mandatory?

    3) Are there any restrictions to dematerialise shares having active ISIN status but currently not traded as being listed on non-functional regional stock exchange?

    • Venu says:

      1) Savings account is just fine
      2) SEBI suspended MAPIN soon after its implementation. So no MAPIN required
      3) As long as the ISIN is active, it can be dematerialized and can be held in your demat account.

  24. Ishwar M. says:

    Hi,

    Thanks for introducing this concept of Broking as a service!

    With Kite Publisher, once the user clicks on the Trade button, is it only a one way communication to place the order? Or can the order status whether it is executed, pending or rejected etc. be returned back for display to the user?

    Thanks,
    Ishwar.

    • If the end user authorizes we can share the order status as well.

      • Ishwar M. says:

        Looks good! Do you have a simulated environment where we can test the APIs to create some dummy orders?

      • Ishwar M. says:

        In the documentation, it says “If you intent on distributing your mobile or desktop application to the public, do not embed the api_secret in the application. Use a server backend to do the token exchange on behalf of your application.”

        If we intend to build an application for public distribution, is there an alternative easier solution for this which will eliminate the overhead of maintaining a backend server just for authentication?

        Thanks,
        Ishwar.

        • Kailash Nadh says:

          This is a much discussed topic when it comes to API keys and distributed client apps, and the most secure and widely adopted practise is to maintain a backend.

          There’s simply no way to 100% securely hide the secret key in a client application.

          • Ishwar M. says:

            Yes, I understand. How about some kind of hosted solution for the backend which partners can subscribe to? There, the partners could login and maintain their secret key… Is something like this a possibility?

            • Kailash Nadh says:

              Kite Connect is already the hosted solution, if you think about it. If we add another hosted solution, then to validate partner requests, we’ll have to introduce a new key exchange mechanism, putting us back at square one and making the setup unnecessarily complicated.

              Really, the maintaining a simple HTTP server on the cloud somewhere (AWS, for instance) for keeping your keys secure shouldn’t really be an overhead. If you look at the security tradeoff, it’s well justified.

              • Ishwar M. says:

                Ok, fine. Now, going with the approach of maintaining the secret key on the backend server, I have the below question:

                Once login is complete and the backend server gets the access_token based on the secret key, can this access_token be sent to the client app for use in subsequent requests directly from the app to Kite Connect? Or should the access_token be only on the backend server, and all subsequent requests from the app also need to be routed through the server to Kite Connect?

  25. Sachin says:

    Nitin,Kailash,

    At Stocksidea.com, we currently provide software to automate trade through NEST/Pi based on Amibroker signals, without need of manual entering the data. In one form, it is kind of automation but not the direct submission to exchange.

    While desktop software has helped many retailers, I wanted to check if similar system is possible using kite.trade. To clarify my question, if our client submits order at stocksidea.com web platform (built using kite.trade), do they have to visit kite.zerodha.com for manually accepting the order.

    Also, I would like to know what commercial benefits to us are involved.

    Regards,
    Sachin

    • Sachin, you probably know how easy it is to allow automation, but unfortunately as brokers we are regulated by what exchanges ask us to do. Currently regulations around automated trading is grey, hence staying away from it. But if you are using macro’s to automate, you could do that using kite publisher as well. You can send an email to [email protected]

  26. Rathnakara Hande says:

    I have been using Kite for trading for the last one month and was very happy about its features.Today I was logged out many times between 14:30 Hrs and 15:30 Hrs with an error message given below.
    ” Sorry, you logged in elsewhere or your session timed out”
    Please let me know the possible reason and corrective action to avoid such a situation

  27. uma says:

    Very bitter experience today (17-12-2015). Your servers were down it was not possible to login into PI or Kite. Had to wait for more than 10 minutes on the line to contact your call and trade staff. Trading plan went awry.

    • Uma, our phone lines went down completely today. One of our servers had internet issues because of which Kite was having issues. The backup lines went down at the same time as well.

  28. Sonu Thomas says:

    Hi Kailash
    Please clarify if I have understood about Kite Publisher. I can embed buy or sell buttons on my website or blog (which describes the rationale for the company) and it allows the retailer to buy or sell the shares through Zerodha.
    If that is right, as per my understanding, to give buy or sell recommendation on specific stocks, SEBI requires the individual to be registered as an investment advisor or a research analyst (and corresponding rules on the author not to trade for certain days after the post). Specific recommendations (on stocks) are not allowed without registering with SEBI.
    Could you please clarify if that is correct or not? Concept is very good, but my concern is the rules that SEBI has laid down.

    • To give recommendations you will need SEBI advisory license. If you have this, you can recommend it on your website and give a buy/sell button next to this using Kite publisher.

  29. Dear all, I am using kite and to be honest its a lovely platform with all the bugs solved really fast by your developer’s. Great work. I as a trader use it everyday and its lovely and I would want only one thing. I use market profile trading technique and for the i use ambi broker and if you guys can give daily volume profile with intraday chats like for every day separate volume graph it would be of great use. right now the volume profile is for a whole time period. attaching screen shot. pls it would be of great help

  30. Vivek says:

    So BaaS model is like an improved version of the sub broking concept, the difference being that it’s vastly more convenient to get started with little to no hassles in the way of regulatory compliance issues. Right?

    • Kailash Nadh says:

      Actually, I think it’s only remotely similar to sub-broking. Think of it like a payment gateway. You can plug in payment gateways to enable flow of money. You can use Kite Connect to plug in an “investment gateway” to enable flow of investments in your product/tech, however you may wish to present them.

      Also, this is a technological move. Everything in the ecosystem is a straight forward API.

  31. Rahul says:

    Okay, this by far has to be the most disruptive movements in the near history of financial tech. I have been sitting on an idea that I think can change the way India invests, but didn’t have the balls to quit my lousy job wondering all that will take to execute it. Thanks a lot from the bottom of my heart.

  32. Rachit Jain says:

    Hi, i am using Kite from quite a time now and jus luv this software, i generally trade in options segment what i feel is it would be great for a trader like me if i can get position delta of my open position at any given point in time or may be your software can calculate other greeks for my option strategy.

    Any ways

    Thanks a ton for creating such a lovely trading atmosphere here

    Zerodha Rocks

  33. uma says:

    As regards bracket orders, only limit orders can be placed. Please make provision for placing stop loss entry i.e entry when price crosses a level and provision for two target orders.

  34. Tuhin Paul says:

    Dear
    Team Zerodha,

    I have some queries to you____
    When are you going to add cover orders and bracket orders in Kite?
    Can You please enable CO & BO for after market order?
    We cannot access charts more than 5 years on stock.will you enable this?

  35. i was happy to receive a thanks email from zerodha that an referal account was opened. the “participating in the Zerodha Associate Program” in the email was

    a great feeling.

    i read a email received after the above email as “Kite connect – Commoditising & Democratising Investment Tech” in the subject line, i learnt a new word

    called “Fintech Services”.

    further motivation to earn a living through business in financial services is the email quote as “Kick start your investmenttechidea”, i clicked more.. and

    read through it. Got lot of knowledge from that.

    I went thru your Z-connect information about the same and found interest in “Opening Account” through referal via this “pluggable financial technologies”.
    I

    think “Kite Connect” IS FOR THE referal account opened can use this via REST-Api.

    I am not really clear about this “Kite Publisher” that can help the referel account opened investors and traders.

    I like you to thro little light on the above, and the costs involved.

    I am a developer using .Net framework 4.6.1 (C# language) using genuine windows.

    thanks.

    • Kailash Nadh says:

      Hi there,
      Kite Publisher allows you to embed trade buttons in your mobile app, webpages, desktop apps etc., where it works like a payment gateway. You get referral revenue from the trades executed by your users and accounts opened.

      There are no costs involved. Details and documentation for the program is going to be published in the coming days.

      • your “kite connect api/kite publisher” is free for zerodha customer known from your blog/site, read the api details too, but rainmatter is replied with “exchange approved” required.
        am confused…need details please.

        • Kite connect API is used for building a full fledged retail trading platform. This is meant for fintech companies looking at building niche investing/trading platforms. This needs to be approved by exchanges before giving it to public. If you are interested in this, send us a brief report on how you are intending to implement. We can get on a call and figure out how to take this forward.
          Kite publisher can be integrated with any website/blog. For this no exchange approvals are required as when anyone presses buy/sell, a buy/sell order form opens up within Kite (after authentication). If you need this, send a request again for this.

          • sanjay_arora says:

            Hi Nithin

            Am a new customer, traded only two days on your platform.

            You say “Kite connect API is used for building a full fledged retail trading platform”.

            Does that mean that one can use it to build one’s own trading infrastructure for prop. trading?

            Of course, if one does not want exchange examination of one’s algos one can always use the semi automated way and have one person click on the buttons that oms throws up on generated trades? Correct?

            Of course, this will not on tick/flash trades but should do well on any timeframe above 5 minutes? Correct?

            If so, what are the requirements & costs of building such an infrastructure using your api?

            Rgds.

  36. Melwin says:

    Hello Kailash,
    Say If I have an investment blog and I publish an article about a stock which can perform good in future. Now if a reader who is not a zerodha customer cannot use the pluggable button to buy the stock using zerodha. Wondering what would be the business case for the same.
    Regards
    Melwin

    • Kailash Nadh says:

      The user will have the option of signing up with Zerodha online (KYC, account opening etc. will be handled by us). The user’s account will be mapped to you and the standard referral revenue will apply not only for trades done via your Kite Publish account but all trades the user does at Zerodha.

  37. KAC says:

    One more thing – why don’t you open up the API’s to your retail customers too. At least we can then create our own personal applications with the feature set we want and use. If you guys can’t provide features – we can for ourselves! Subject to the feature set exposed by the API’ s of course.

    • Kailash Nadh says:

      There are strict exchange regulations around this. All terminals, no matter how personal or rudimentary, need approvals. For a retail person to get approvals for such a platform from exchanges, it’s going to be really difficult.

      However, we’re trying to figure out ways to make this happen in some form or other.

      • Vivek says:

        @KAC isn’t the latest pi bridge supposed to cater to this need.
        @Kailash so why is Zerodha trying to do this in some form or other

        • Kailash Nadh says:

          Vivek, in all honestly, the primary goal is innovation in fintech. When developers and startups getting involved, it’s good for the industry, good for retail clients, and as technology enablers, good for our business as well.

  38. KAC says:

    vh is correct! Please concentrate on getting your retail products in shape first like enabling KITE for BSE trading and discontinuation of that worse than pathetic trade.zerodha.com platform – everytime I use it I cringe and want to hit somebody 🙂

  39. vh says:

    From end customers perspective, all these are useless news. As we want a good Website like kite for BSE trading. currently we use trade.zerodha.com which is pathetic. and also there was some news of kite mobile app which has also not come out so far.

    ps. don’t tell me to use PI because I use only apple osx (mac)

    • Kailash Nadh says:

      Sorry that you find this piece of news “useless”. It’s not meant for end user investors and traders, but for developers.

      BSE integration is happening and will become available on Kite very soon. And yes, we’re deprecating trade.zerodha.com permanently once this is done.

      The native Kite Android app is also under development. You do have to understand that for the amount of things Zerodha puts out, not everything can be done overnight 🙂

      Thanks for your patience.

  40. Arun says:

    hii kailash

    i am from qatar now,i have an account in zerodha taken in 2013.i cant able to use zerodha platform here becz of rules here.
    can i use kite service for trading in commodity.
    is that have the same working we used in zerodha platform.
    did i need any other account for trade in kite or can i use my old account.
    can i get some basics of kite services.

  41. Biju joseph says:

    Please in your order form keep a slot for stoploss ,so that while placing I keep my stoploss as well,because most of the time the stoploss are in our mind and resulting in unwanted loss.

  42. Karan says:

    Hi Kailash,

    Currently I run a startup http://www.squareoff.in which provides algorithm to retail traders on a monthly subscription model, which not only decides when to buy or when to sell, it can place automatic trades into individual customer account without any manual intervention needed from customer. We currently use Symphony Fintech API.

    Using Zerodha API, is it possible for us develop applications that can help our customers to place trades automatically?

  43. Vivek says:

    1. Does the publisher needs a (sub)-broking license?

    2. Or is it a passthrough from publisher to zerodha? If user has zerodha account, he/she can execute trade after logging in to zerodha, else a screen will be shown to open account with zerodha?

    • Kailash Nadh says:

      Hello Vivek,
      Kite Publisher (embeddable buttons on webpages) works like a payment gateway, where the execution happens at Zerodha (after the user logs into the Zerodha account) and comes back to your webpage. You do not need any sort of license for this.

      With Kite Connect, if you build your own platform, you’ll need to get exchange approvals for the terminal, but you still don’t need any sort of licenses if you use Zerodha has the broking entity.

  44. Nehal Suthar says:

    hey all, I’ve already reported couple of bugs in your kite a month back and I’m still waiting for the answers from developers. can anyone at least take a step to update me on that?

  45. Sudhir Shetty says:

    Hi Kailash,

    I have a self developed stock analysis software built in vb6 . How can i use your APIs within my application (vb6 or vb.net) so that i can place orders from within my application ?

    Regards,
    Sudhir