India’s top broking firm Groww extended its lead over competitors in October, even though it was the worst month for the equity market since the Covid shock in 2020.
The new-age wealth management startup’s active traders went past the 1.25 crore mark after the Bengaluru-based stockbroker added around 3.5 lakh users during the month, data available with the National Stock Exchange (NSE) shows.
Its nearest rival, Zerodha, had around 80 lakh investors, as the gap between the two widened to 45 lakh. Last year, Groww overtook Zerodha to emerge as the country’s leading broker when both players had around 64 lakh users.
Groww has almost doubled its user base in a year, while Zerodha added only 15 lakh new users, an average addition of 1.25 lakh a month. Groww has been adding around 5 lakh users a month.
The third-largest player, Angel One, added close to 25 lakh customers during the 12-month period, with 2.5 lakh users a month. The company is now 5 lakhs away from Zerodha to knock it off the second place.
In October, the equity market saw its sharpest fall in a month at over 6 percent since March 2020, when the Covid lockdown triggered panic among investors.
The October does not seem to have deterred new investors from entering the market.
NSE classifies active investors as those who have done one transaction in 12 months.
While the new user additions fluctuate every month, most large brokers have continued to add similar numbers to that of September. The current new user additions, however, are down 20-30 percent for some of the large discount brokers but at a much larger base.
The fourth-placed Upstox is seeing a gradual rise. It had 28.5 lakh active investors in October, up from 21.5 lakh in the previous year.
Dhan, which recently displaced Paytm Money from the top 10 brokers list, added more than 50,000 investors, which was the highest after the big three.
In terms of revenue, Zerodha continues to be far ahead of Groww, with a topline of Rs 8,320 crore in FY24. Groww’s revenue came in at Rs 2,900 crore.
Broking firms are bracing for higher taxes on trading, lower exchange rebates and possible restrictions on retail futures and options trading. Most broking firms could see a 30-50 percent hit to the topline in the second half of FY25, experts say.
There are more than 160 million demat accounts in the country but the number of active investors is around 50 million, exchange data shows.
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