The encyclopedia · Finance & Accounting · Financial decision · 2010–2024
Zerodha killed delivery-trade commissions and quietly became India's biggest broker
The Kamath brothers made delivery trades free and intraday ₹20, ran fully online, and grew Zerodha into India's biggest broker with ₹4,700 crore FY24 profit.
Zerodha
the move
Nithin and Nikhil Kamath founded Zerodha in 2010 (opening 15 August 2010) when Indian brokers charged roughly 0.5–1% of trade value — a wall that kept ordinary savers out of the market. On 1 December 2015 Zerodha made delivery (cash-equity) trades commission-free, the first broker in India to do so; intraday and derivatives trades cost a flat ₹20. Rivals mocked the ₹20 fee — 'can't even buy a samosa' — but the joke described the point: a model built on volume and automation, not per-trade margin.
Technology did the work of the sales force. Zerodha built its own Kite platform (about 90% of clients trade on it), opened APIs to the ecosystem, kept headcount deliberately near 1,000 with no sales targets and no branches, and stayed bootstrapped. In January 2019 it became India's largest broker by active clients (84,700 vs ICICI Securities' 84,400), and has contributed over 10% of India's retail trading volume.
The economics are the payoff: in FY24 Zerodha posted net profit of ₹4,700 crore (+61.5%) on revenue of ₹8,320 crore (+21%) — India's most profitable new-age company — while holding roughly 16% of BSE active clients by mid-2024. The 'free delivery' headline that rivals could not match without dismantling their own pricing did the marketing for free.
why it works
- Price at your cost structure, not at the market's: fixed/zero fees made small orders unattractive for percentage-based rivals while volume and automation made them trivial for Zerodha.
- The pricing is also the ad: 'free delivery trades' is a headline competitors cannot replicate without wrecking their own economics, so the discount itself became the marketing.
what transfers
Free is not giving money away — re-price on the unit where your costs are lowest and the customer's pain is highest, and let competitors' commission models become your advertising.
what came after
Zerodha held the #1 spot as discount rivals (Upstox, Groww) arrived. FY24 profit of ₹4,700cr made it India's most profitable startup-scale company. Its stated risk is now regulatory: securities-transaction-tax hikes and index-derivative curbs targeting retail speculation — Nithin Kamath warned FY25 revenue could fall 30–50% under the new rules, a bet that the model survives a volume shock.
references
- Bengaluru broking firm Zerodha scraps fee for cash trades, rivals miffed by move
- Zerodha replaces biggies as largest broker in India
- Zerodha profit jumps 61.5% in FY24; CEO warns of regulatory challenges
- Our company, history, and the people behind it
spotted an error? The archive wants to know.