Zerodha's bootstrapped discount-broker bet: ₹4,283 crore profit and still no IPO

Discount stockbroking: equity, derivatives and mutual fund investing through the in-house Kite platform, plus a growing margin-trading book.

Flat ₹20-per-trade pricing with lean in-house tech would turn India's price-sensitive retail investors into a profitable, self-funded brokerage.

About ₹10 lakh of the founders' own money in 2010 — roughly $12,000 — and no external funding since, per Kamath's own accounting quoted by Business Today.

Zerodha was founded in August 2010 in Bengaluru by brothers Nithin and Nikhil Kamath. Their father was a bank manager; the family had, in Nithin's words, no rich uncles. Total money ever spent on the business: about ₹10 lakh, covering a website, office interiors, and miscellaneous costs.

The flat-fee model spread through trading communities and Zerodha grew into India's largest broker by revenue, with its small in-house engineering team becoming a Hacker News favorite along the way. Then regulation hit the engine: SEBI raised the securities transaction tax on options, cut expiries to two weekly contracts, and ended exchange rebates to brokers. FY25 revenue fell 11.5% and profit 23%; in FY26 revenue stayed flat at about ₹8,847 crore and profit edged up 1.2% to ₹4,283 crore, with brokerage income down 11% to ₹2,738 crore and transaction-charge income falling to zero. A ₹9,000 crore margin-trading book cushioned the blow.

Still private, still bootstrapped, and still roughly twice as large as listed rival Groww on revenue and profit — with Kamath saying an IPO is not on the table because there is no investor to exit.

Flat ₹20 pricing converted India's most vocal traders into evangelists; the discount model spread through communities Zerodha never had to pay for.

A small in-house tech team kept fixed costs so low that the business printed money at volumes where percentage-brokerage incumbents needed scale just to break even.

Because no investor ever needed an exit, Zerodha could skip the burn-to-grow playbook and let profitability fund Rainmatter, Coin, and new products.

Margin trading — a ₹9,000 crore book by FY26 — diversified revenue away from trading activity right before the derivatives crackdown arrived.

When SEBI's options rules crushed volumes industry-wide, Zerodha's cushion let it hold prices and wait, while listed peers had to show growth every quarter.

Bootstrapping is a strategy, not a budget: with no investors there is no exit clock, so a company can absorb the two flat years that break its venture-funded rivals.

As of September 19, 2026, Zerodha remains India's largest broker by revenue and its most profitable new-age financial firm: FY26 net profit of ₹4,283 crore, two flat years after the FY24 peak, with no external funding on the cap table and no IPO planned. It is widening beyond broking — margin trading, the Coin mutual fund platform, Rainmatter investments in fintechs and FOSS — while listed Groww competes harder for new accounts. Kamath's stance is unchanged: staying private keeps the focus on customers instead of shareholders, and there is no pressure to engineer an exit.