The archive · Money & Fintech · Product decision · 2021-2026
Dhan's speed-first brokerage bet pays off: $1.2B unicorn, profitable FY25
Ex-Paytm Money CEO Pravin Jadhav bet on a faster, API-first broker: FY25 revenue ~₹900 Cr, PAT ~₹400 Cr, $120M round at $1.2B.
Dhan (Raise Financial Services)
What the business is
A stock-trading app and API-first brokerage (Dhan) owned by Raise Financial Services, competing with Zerodha, Groww and Upstox for Indian retail investors.
Starting capital：$22M Series A led by BEENEXT in 2022 at a $125M valuation (Inc42, Oct 2025), followed by the $120M Series B in Oct 2025.
How it started
Raise Financial Services was founded in January 2021 by Pravin Jadhav, former CEO of Paytm Money, with Alok Pandey and Jay Prakash Gupta; Dhan launched in November 2021. Jadhav's thesis: Indian retail investors were moving from savings into markets, and incumbents' apps were slow, cluttered and thin on tools.
What happened
Dhan grew to about 1M monthly active users and turned profitable: PAT ~₹177 Cr in FY24, then ~₹400 Cr on ~₹900 Cr revenue in FY25. It layered on ScanX research, Upsurge education, Filter Coffee content, the Fuzz AI research assistant and the Artham small language model. In 2025 it acquired algo-trading platform Stratzy (100+ exchange-approved strategies) and was in talks to buy wealth-tech startup Infinyte Club.
How it ended up
In October 2025 Raise raised $120M Series B led by Hornbill Capital, with MUFG, BEENEXT, Ramesh Damani, DSP and JM Financial family offices, at a $1.2B valuation - becoming India's sixth unicorn of 2025 - and is expanding from brokerage into investing, AI and financial services distribution.
Background
Dhan is an Indian stock-trading app whose parent, Raise Financial Services, was founded in January 2021 by Pravin Jadhav, the former CEO of Paytm Money, along with Alok Pandey and Jay Prakash Gupta. The bet was that a new generation of Indian retail investors would leave slow, cluttered incumbent apps for a platform that won on speed, product depth and APIs - and that brokerage revenue could then fund a broader investing business.
The differentiators were technical. Dhan built DEXT, an in-house trading engine that processes 95% of orders in under 20 milliseconds, benchmarked by AWS as up to six times faster than industry standard, and DhanHQ, an API-first trading platform aimed at serious traders. The strategy produced profit early: PAT of about ₹177 Cr in FY24, then about ₹400 Cr on roughly ₹900 Cr revenue in FY25.
In October 2025 Raise raised a $120M Series B led by Hornbill Capital, with MUFG, BEENEXT and several family offices, at a $1.2B valuation - India's sixth unicorn of 2025. The company then moved beyond brokerage: it launched the Fuzz AI research assistant and Artham small language model, and acquired algorithmic-investing platform Stratzy, positioning Dhan as a decision layer rather than just a transaction layer.
The open question is scale: Dhan has about 1M monthly active users versus Groww's 12M+, and SEBI is tightening rules around options trading, the category's most profitable product. Dhan's answer is depth and integration - APIs, AI, education and content bundled into one system - rather than chasing mass-market users.
What has to be true
- Dhan turned profitable in FY24, only its third year, while the category's giants were still funded by growth expectations.
- The speed-first wedge is measurable: DEXT processes 95% of orders in under 20 ms, a benchmark verified by AWS.
- The October 2025 $120M round at $1.2B was a near-10x valuation jump from the $125M Series A in 2022.
- The expansion into AI, education, media and algo-trading shows a brokerage trying to become an investing operating system, not just a cheaper execution channel.
What can be applied
Beat category incumbents on a dimension they ignored - Dhan won on speed and API depth - and reach profitability before scaling, which buys room to expand beyond the wedge.
Aftermath
As of April 2026 Raise is scaling beyond brokerage: it acquired algorithmic-investing platform Stratzy, which will keep operating independently across multiple brokers, and was in talks to acquire wealth-tech startup Infinyte Club. It continues to report profits on ~₹900 Cr FY25 revenue while holding roughly 1M monthly active users, competing with much larger Groww (12M+), Zerodha and Angel One. Its stated ambition is a financial operating system for India's next generation of investors, with SEBI's tightening of options-trading norms as the main regulatory backdrop.
Sources
- Dhan Becomes Unicorn With $120 Mn Funding Round
- Trading Platform Dhan's Parent Company Turns Unicorn With $120 Million Fundraise
- Dhan Bets Beyond Brokerage
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