Over the years, Groww has enabled millions of Indians to invest in the stock markets, and now its own IPO has been enthusiastically by investors.
Billionbrains Garage Ventures Limited, the company behind investment app Groww, today went public on the stock markets. The stock opened 15% over its IPO price of Rs. 100. It rose further during the day, first appearing to settle at levels of Rs. 120, before a late surge took it past the Rs. 130 mark. Groww ended the day at Rs. 129, with a smart 29% gain on opening day.
The strong listing now values Groww — founded in 2017 — at a market cap of Rs. 80,000 crore. This is a remarkable result for the company, which had been founded when Zerodha was already the pre-eminent discount broker in India. But Groww focused on Tier 2 and Tier 3 customers, and over the years managed to go past Zerodha to become India’s biggest stock broker by number of active users. Like Zerodha, Groww has also managed to be profitable, reporting profit of Rs. 1,824 crore in FY25.
The IPO has also meant a windfall for Groww’s four co-founders, Lalit Keshre, Harsh Jain, Neeraj Singh and Ishan Bansal. They all had shares worth between Rs. 2,700 crore and Rs. 5,500 crore each at the IPO price, and they’ve all received a nice 30% bump on opening day. Groww’s CEO Lalit Keshre is close to being a billionaire following the IPO, while the other co-founders are worth over $500 million each. The IPO has also meant impressive returns for early investors, including Kunal Shah and Ashneer Grover, who have profited handsomely from their early investments.
And Groww’s success shows that it is possible to enter a market that already has lots of successful incumbents, and still make a dent. The stock broking space already had established banking players including ICICI, HDFC and SBI. In the discount broker space, there were companies like AngelOne, ShareKhan and others, while Zerodha was the clear market leader with a lion’s share of the market. Groww had initially started off by selling only mutual funds, but pivoted into stocks, and over the next few years left all of them behind to become India’s largest stock broker. It remains to be seen if Groww can sustain the momentum, but for now, it’s grown into being a giant in India’s fintech space.