2024 turns out a blockbuster year for brokers despite lower returns

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Stock broking firm Groww added more than 50 lakh users till November 2024, more than double the number it had signed up last year. The Bengaluru-based company had closed 2023 with 24 lakh new users.

Most of the top 10 brokers had similar healthy addition of investors this year when tallied against 2023, even though the market performance was more subdued in 2024.

Bengaluru-headquartered Zerodha added 14 lakh users in 2024, far outgrowing 2 lakh it had added a year back. The country’s third largest broker Angel One had 24 lakh new users this year, compared with 11 lakh in 2023.

The top three brokers, Groww, Zerodha and Angel One, had investor bases of around 1.3 crore, 81 lakh and 76 lakh, respectively, till November, shows data available with the National Stock Exchange.

Top Brokers

Late last year, Groww had surpassed Zerodha as the largest broking company and this May, it saw the total number of active traders on the platform grow to over 10 million. At the third spot, Angel One, is snapping at the heels of Zerodha.

While 2024 saw around 9 percent return in the stock market, Indian equity markets saw good returns of around 20 percent in 2023. But the new investor addition was better this year. “This is a reflection of new players aggressively trying to attract users. We saw Groww, Share.Market, Dhan, Angel One, HDFC Securities and INDMoney trying to attract customers with marketing,” said the CEO of one of the leading discount brokers.

While the number of demat accounts or investors is around 160 million or 16 crore, the number of unique users is around 5 crore.

“There is a lot of room to grow before we reach any saturation point. The growth will be cyclical according to market sentiment and returns, the economy continues to grow and we will see more investors coming for a couple of decades,” said Ujjwal Jain, CEO of Share.Market, the discount broking platform run by payments firm PhonePe. The company has seen rapid user growth since April.

Even in October and November, when the markets hit the lowest levels this year, the customer addition remained better than most months of 2023.

Other players in the top ten league such as HDFC Securities, which recently launched discount broking platform HDFC Sky, Kotak Securities, SBICAP Securities and Dhan also saw good growth during 2024.

“The customers came on investment platforms with a lag watching last year's returns. And for most of 2024, the markets were touching new peaks every month. Even the slowdown in October and November seem to result from festivities and cyclical slowdown and not necessarily because of the returns,” said a founder whose discount broking app features among the top ten players.

Broking firms are, however, bracing for higher taxes on trading, lower exchange rebates, and stricter restrictions on retail futures and options trading during the current financial year. Most broking firms could see a 30-50 percent hit to the topline during the second half of FY 25.