The LSE Directory / Retail brokers
HDFC Securities Limited is a Mumbai-headquartered stockbroking and financial services firm that began operations in April 2000 as a joint venture between HDFC Bank, HDFC Limited and Indocean eSecurities Holdings Limited. It is registered with SEBI as a trading member (registration no. INZ000186937) of the NSE, BSE, MSEI and MCX, and is AMFI-registered for mutual fund distribution. Its product range covers cash and derivatives equity trading, currency and commodity derivatives, IPO/OFS/buyback participation, mutual funds, bonds and corporate fixed deposits, the National Pension Scheme, gold ETFs and margin trading, distributed through a branch network and digital platforms including the InvestRight app and web terminal, the ProTerminal desktop platform, and Arya, a voice-enabled investing assistant. The firm's traditional model bundles broking with HDFC Bank's banking and demat accounts and relationship-manager-led branches, targeting banking-linked retail and HNI investors who value integrated research and advisory alongside execution, in contrast to bare-bones discount brokers such as Zerodha, Groww or Upstox. To compete for younger, price-sensitive traders, it launched a second app, HDFC Sky, in September 2023, built on AWS cloud infrastructure, charging a flat Rs 20 per order across equities, derivatives, currency, commodities and ETFs. Managing Director and CEO Dhiraj Relli described the positioning as "low-cost broking" rather than "discount broking," betting that bundling in-house fundamental and technical research and training content with execution differentiates HDFC Sky from pure discount platforms. HDFC Securities is a subsidiary of HDFC Bank, having become fully bank-owned after HDFC Bank bought out HDFC Limited's stake in 2006 and Indocean eSecurities' remaining stake in 2008; it became more directly integrated into the bank's group structure following HDFC Limited's merger into HDFC Bank on July 1, 2023. Per HDFC Bank's investor disclosures for the quarter ended September 30, 2025, the firm served roughly 7.4 million registered customers through 130 branches across 104 cities, up from about 6.1 million customers and 142 branches a year earlier, a shift the company attributes to consolidating physical branches while growing digitally; separately reported active-client data put its NSE active client base at approximately 1.58 million as of June 2025, with about 96% of active clients transacting through digital channels. Dhiraj Relli, a chartered accountant who previously headed branch banking at HDFC Bank, has led the company as Managing Director and CEO. Third-party broker-directory sites list HDFC Securities' branch count considerably higher (as high as 260 to 280+ across 185+ cities), which conflicts with the bank's own investor-disclosure figures above; this description follows the primary-source investor data as the more reliable number and flags the discrepancy rather than picking a figure to reconcile it silently.
