We have never raised a single rupee of external funding. Zero. Every broker in India was chasing VC money and we just built a profitable business from day one.
Indian brokers were charging 0.5 percent per trade. We charged a flat 20 rupees. That is like charging 25 cents instead of 50 dollars. The industry thought we were insane.
We have over 10 million customers and we have never spent a single rupee on advertising. Not one. Our product is our marketing. Happy customers bring more customers.
I was a day trader for 10 years before starting Zerodha. I lost money, I made money, I understood exactly what retail traders needed because I was one of them.
India has 1.4 billion people and only about 100 million demat accounts. The US has 330 million people and over 150 million brokerage accounts. The Indian market is barely getting started.
We open-sourced most of our trading technology. People thought we were crazy. But open source attracted the best developers in India to work with us, and that talent is worth more than any proprietary code.