Nithin Kamath, Founder and CEO of Zerodha, India’s second-largest broker, in a tongue-in-cheek remark, advocated for having a ‘Dalal Street’ in Bengaluru where most retail traders now come from.
Dalal Street is the name of the road where the oldest exchange in India – BSE – is situated. Dalal refers to brokers and it was named like this after the exchange moved here way back in the 19th century. The name, today, is also colloquially used to refer to the stock market in India.
“Symbolism to indicate that over 50 percent of all retail trades in India, in a way, originate from Bengaluru, either from brokers or their tech teams based out of here,” Kamath wrote in a post on X (formally twitter). “13 years ago when we were first starting, the first question asked by many was, who starts a brokerage firm in Bengaluru?”
Today, technology-based brokers such as Groww, Zerodha and Upstox are the biggest in the industry. Most of them have their main offices in Bengaluru.
Meanwhile, fintech startup Groww surpassed Zerodha to become India's leading brokerage in terms of the number of active investors, as per the latest data.
According to NSE, Bengaluru-based Groww has 66.3 lakh active investors while Zerodha has 64.8 lakh at the end of September 2023. In March 2021, Zerodha had 34 lakh customers, whereas Groww had 7.8 lakh. Since then, Zerodha's user base has only doubled, growing at a steady pace and even stagnating over the last couple of months, while Groww saw its customer base surge by 750 percent.
At the end of FY23, the country’s first and largest discount broker by revenue, Zerodha grew to 63.9 lakh customers, while Groww had 53.7 lakh customers. Groww has witnessed a substantial boost in customer base growing from approximately 7.8 lakh users in FY21 to 38.5 lakh in FY22 and 57.8 lakh investors in FY23.
This growth has also attracted some formidable competitors like HDFC Bank, which recently launched the Sky discount broking app.
Discover the latest Business News, Sensex, and Nifty updates. Obtain Personal Finance insights, tax queries, and expert opinions on Moneycontrol or download the Moneycontrol App to stay updated!
