Zerodha
“Can a bootstrapped, profitable discount broker compound into India's retail capital-markets OS without taking on consumer credit risk?”
Founded2010
HQBangalore, Karnataka, India
FoundersNithin Kamath, Nikhil Kamath
Total raisedBootstrapped
Latest roundN/A — bootstrapped
IndustryFintech / Investment
The story
Founded 2010 as India's first discount broker, Zerodha pioneered flat-fee retail trading and grew to 16M+ clients without raising external capital. From a pure broking business it has progressively layered embedded finance: Coin (direct mutual funds), Kite Connect (developer APIs), Zerodha Capital (NBFC for Loan Against Securities), and an insurance distribution partnership with Ditto. Nithin Kamath has publicly ruled out credit cards and personal loans, restricting lending to collateral-backed LAS — a deliberately conservative embedded-finance posture compared with Indian neobroker peers.
Last 12 months
Product timeline
2010
Founded as India's first discount broker· pivot
2013
Launched Kite trading platform· banking
2016
Launched Kite Connect APIs for third-party platforms (Smallcase, Sensibull, Streak)· banking
2017
Launched Coin — direct mutual fund investing platform· banking
2021
Launched retail Loan Against Securities via Zerodha Capital NBFC· lending
2025
Promoters preparing Rs 100–125 crore capital infusion into Zerodha Capital NBFC; loan book crosses Rs 400 crore· lending
Regulated entities
3
regulatory licences held by Zerodha
Licence types, jurisdictions and registered entities are in the Embedded Finance Index report.
The stack
3 layers disclosed in Zerodha’s embedded-finance stack
Payments / PSP
NTT DATA Payment Services (Atom)Pine Labs (BillDesk)Direct bank gateways (IDFC, ICICI, SBI, HDFC, Kotak, Axis)
Lending
in the full report
Open banking
in the full report
Accounting gap: minor
2 more providers across 2 layers, with confidence-scored evidence and source URLs, are in the Embedded Finance Index report.