Zerodha is one of India’s biggest stock brokers, and had reported a profit of Rs. 4,700 crore last year, but it didn’t require very much money at all to get the business started.
Zerodha CEO Nithin Kamath has revealed that they only put in Rs. 10 lakh to start the company, and it’s been sustaining itself ever since. “The money we have spent on Zerodha is maybe ~Rs 10lks, and that is all the money that has gone into the business till date,” he said on X. Kamath also broke down where the money was spent. “Rs 2.5 lks for our website, Rs 5lks for our office interiors (we had an office before), and Rs 2.5 lks for miscellaneous,” he added.
“The start was mainly enabled thanks to the NSE Now trading platform, which came free of cost if you were an NSE broker. For the backoffice piece, sending contract notes, maintaining ledgers, etc., we signed up with a vendor who basically gave it at almost 0 cost. This was provided that we tested out his platform,” Kamath said.
Kamath said that Zerodha had to be frugal because the founders came from a middle-class background. “We came from an extremely middle-class background and had no rich uncles. Dad was a bank manager, and Mom taught Veena,” he said.
Zerodha has come a long way since then. The company was profitable from the start, which enabled it to continue growing its operations without needing external capital. Zerodha is one of the rare Indian startups that has become big without needing VC investment. Also, it’s never marketed its services, choosing instead to build a useful product and then word-of-mouth to make it popular. It’s a strategy that’s worked — Zerodha is one of India’s most profitable startups, having registered a profit of Rs. 4,700 crore last year, and the founders are together worth over Rs. 24,000 crore ($2.5 billion). Zerodha helps people invest their money, but the company’s founders might’ve made one of the best investments of all time by turning a Rs. 10 lakh investment into a Rs. 64,000 crore financial juggernaut in 15 short years.