Zerodha co-founder and CEO Nithin Kamath responded to a query on Reddit about what makes the brokerage different, how it has managed to remain profitable, and why it has avoided going public — offering a masterclass in patience, frugality, and clarity of purpose.
In a detailed post, Nithin Kamath shared a deeply insightful and candid account of the company’s origins — one that is poles apart from today’s typical VC-fueled growth stories.
25 years in making
Kamath highlighted that Zerodha’s success was not an overnight achievement but the result of decades of persistence.
“We have spent 15 years getting here, and maybe another 10 years before Zerodha, I was involved in the markets in some form. So, 25 years in all. Things in business compound over time, especially if you love what you are doing and if you are lucky to be in the right place and time,” he wrote in a post on X.
Starting Small With Minimal Capital
Zerodha began its journey as a partnership firm to minimise costs, with the exchange deposit requirement being ₹90 lakh, compared to ₹1.5 crore for a corporate setup. The early days were enabled by NSE Now, a trading platform provided free of cost to NSE brokers. For its back-office operations, the team relied on a vendor who offered services almost free of charge in exchange for testing his platform.
According to Kamath, the total money spent on setting up Zerodha was around ₹10 lakh — ₹2.5 lakh for its website, ₹5 lakh on office interiors, and ₹2.5 lakh on other miscellaneous costs.
“We came from an extremely middle-class background and had no rich uncles. Dad was a bank manager, and Mom taught Veena,” he recalled.
Kamath credited Zerodha’s rise to being in the right place at the right time as India’s financial markets expanded rapidly. He drew a parallel with Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, who persevered for decades before his company’s big breakthrough. “I was just reading about Jensen Huang from Nvidia, who survived in the business for 30 years until he hit the right place and time. For a long time, people might have questioned what he was doing until very recently,” Kamath wrote.
Any gyan any founder gives, eventually comes down to getting timing right, and this has got everything to do with luck, the 45-year-old entrepreneur observed.
No Pressure for Zerodha IPO or Investor Exit
A key differentiator for Zerodha, Kamath stressed, is the absence of external investor pressure. With no need to provide an exit through an IPO, the company can focus on customer-centric policies even at the expense of short-term profits.
“For example, our no spam or no tracking policy. The philosophy with which we run Zerodha will be our real moat as a business. It is very tough to stick to it as a public company,” he explained.
Kamath concluded by stating that the freedom from investor expectations allows Zerodha to focus on long-term value creation and ethical business practices. “Our rise coincides with India’s rise. We were present at the right place and time with the right products and initiatives,” he said, adding that the company’s guiding principles will continue to be its biggest strength.
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