The LSE Directory / Retail brokers
Zerodha is an Indian retail brokerage headquartered in Bengaluru that offers trading and investment in equities, derivatives, currencies, commodities, mutual funds and bonds through its own Kite trading platform for web, desktop and mobile, alongside Console for portfolio and tax reporting, Coin for direct mutual funds, and Kite Connect, a paid trading API used by third party developers and fintech companies. It is a trading member of the NSE, BSE, MCX and MSEI, and is registered with SEBI under registration number INZ000031633. The company popularized the flat fee discount brokerage model in India when it launched in August 2010, charging a fixed amount per executed order instead of a percentage of trade value, and it continues to charge zero brokerage on equity delivery trades, undercutting the commission structures of full service incumbents. Unlike venture funded rivals such as Groww and Upstox, Zerodha has remained entirely bootstrapped and privately held by the Kamath family since founding, funding its growth from operating profit rather than outside capital, and it builds its own trading technology in house under chief technology officer Kailash Nadh rather than licensing third party platforms. Its wider group extends into fund management and startup investing through Rainmatter, a fintech fund and incubator started in 2014, True Beacon, an alternative investment fund launched in 2019, and Zerodha Fund House, an asset management arm launched in October 2023. Nithin Kamath, chief executive, and his brother Nikhil Kamath founded Zerodha in Bengaluru in August 2010, bootstrapping the business with about ₹2 crore in personal savings. Net profit grew from about ₹2,907 crore in FY23 to ₹5,496 crore in FY24 (the year to March 2024), a roughly 89 percent increase, on revenue of about ₹9,993 crore, making it one of India's most profitable brokerages and funded entirely from its own balance sheet with no external venture capital ever raised. Nithin Kamath sits on SEBI's Secondary Market Advisory Committee and Market Data Advisory Committee. FY25 (the year to March 2025) brought Zerodha's first revenue and profit decline in its history: revenue fell 11.5 percent to about ₹8,847 crore and net profit fell 22.9 percent to about ₹4,237 crore, after SEBI tightened index derivatives rules from October and November 2024, raising the securities transaction tax on options and cutting weekly index options expiries to two contracts, changes Kamath estimated would affect about 60 percent of the exchange's F&O trades. Its active client base stood at roughly 7.58 million with about 15.6 percent market share by October 2025, having been overtaken as India's largest broker by active clients in September 2023 by the venture funded Groww, which listed via IPO in November 2025 and reported around 12.6 million active clients and ₹1,824 crore profit for FY25. Kamath has said Zerodha may be forced to start charging brokerage on equity delivery trades, free since launch, if regulators impose further curbs on weekly options.
