Nithin Kamath says Zerodha has over 1.6 crore users ‘without advertising’

Nithin Kamath said that Zerodha's success hinges on its customer-centric philosophy, with nearly 30 percent of users joining through referrals by other customers.

Zerodha co-founder and CEO Nithin Kamath says that the online brokerage platform has managed to attract more than 1.6 crore users managing assets worth Rs 6 lakh crore without any advertising. Speaking about the company's organic growth Kamath took to LinkedIn to share why they did not want to spend on ads.

“India is a tough market to earn in,” he wrote. “If we had advertised, much of our profits would have gone to Google and Meta. We may be the only B2C (business to consumer) company to have reached this scale without ever advertising. In hindsight, not advertising has helped us stay true to our philosophy of not pushing people to trade, no spam, etc."

He added that Zerodha's success hinges on its customer-centric philosophy, with nearly 30 percent of users joining through referrals by other customers.

Earlier, Kamath had likened advertising to a dangerous addiction. “Advertising is like being on cocaine. Once you start, you can’t stop,” he had told Economic Times. Moreover, Kamath said that when they launched Zerodha, they didn’t have the money to spend on advertising. By 2015, when we started rolling out our products, we were already ahead in the race.

"Another reason we didn’t advertise is that to do so, you had to compete with the likes of Flipkart and Amazon for eyeballs. They were targeting the masses, and our target group was probably just 1 percent of that. All these factors kept us away from advertising," the Zerodha CEO told the publication.

Sticking to this philosophy helped the company stay focused on providing value and building the company without spending on flashy marketing campaigns.

Established in 2010 by the Kamath brothers, Nithin and Nikhil, Zerodha is currently India's leading online brokerage platform.