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Zerodha Broking Limited
Zerodha is an Indian online brokerage that lets ordinary people buy and sell stocks, mutual funds, and other investments through a low-cost app.
Zerodha is India's largest discount broker. It gives people an app and a website to buy and sell stocks, mutual funds, bonds, and currency derivatives, mostly on Indian exchanges. Before Zerodha, opening a trading account in India was expensive and clunky, with fat commissions on every trade and paperwork that could take days. Zerodha flipped that: it charged nothing for equity delivery trades and a flat fee for intraday and options trades, and it made signing up fast and fully online.
The money comes from a few places. It earns a small flat fee on intraday and derivatives trades, plus charges for things like account opening and annual maintenance. It also makes money from the float — cash sitting in customer accounts earns interest — and from margin trading facilities where it lends clients money to trade. A large share of its revenue comes from options trading, which is where most of its active users spend their time. Zerodha does not run research desks or push products; it is a pure pipes business, connecting retail investors to the exchanges. What made Zerodha huge was timing and trust. It launched in 2010, right as smartphone use exploded in India, and its clean, no-nonsense platform spread by word of mouth. The founders, Nithin and Nikhil Kamath, built it without outside venture money, which is rare for a company of its size. That independence let it keep prices low and avoid the pressure to upsell customers. It also built its own technology in-house, so it could keep costs down and move quickly.
The business is strong but exposed. India's market regulator has been tightening rules on derivatives trading, especially options, because small retail traders lose money there. Those rules can shrink the very trading volume Zerodha depends on. Competition from other low-cost brokers and from big banks with their own apps is also fierce. Still, Zerodha remains profitable, debt-free, and one of the most trusted names in Indian retail investing, with millions of active clients.
Saved answer · last researched 10 Nov 2026