Nithin Kamath: Zerodha Founder's Biography

Key facts
Born	1979, Shivamogga (Shimoga), Karnataka (published profiles give 5 October 1979)
Family roots	Konkani family; father U. R. Kamath spent his career at Canara Bank; mother Revathi taught the veena [44] [2]
Education	Engineering studies at Bangalore Institute of Technology; by his own account he never cleared the backlog of papers needed for the degree [30]
Family	Married to Seema Patil, a whole-time director of Zerodha; younger brother Nikhil Kamath is Zerodha’s co-founder [1] [72]
Company/Group	Zerodha Broking Ltd (founder and CEO); Zerodha Fund House; Rainmatter (startup investments and climate foundation)
Wealth	About US$4.7 billion (Forbes real-time, 13 Oct 2026) [37]; “Nithin Kamath & family” Rs 40,020 crore, rank 64 (Hurun India Rich List 2025) [98] [99]
Known for	Building India’s first big discount broker without outside funding, advertising or a sales team; zero brokerage on stock investing; Varsity; Rainmatter

Where it began

In September 2011, a journalist from The Economic Times called a small Bengaluru brokerage that was promising to charge traders a flat Rs 20 an order. The person who picked up the phone was the founder himself, Nithin Kamath. But in those days he did not make sales calls as Nithin. He called himself “Sachin” and, as he later admitted, “faked a weird accent”. “You didn’t want the CEO making sales calls,” he wrote fifteen years later. “I’ve even met customers pretending to be Sachin.” [29]

The one-line mention that followed was a turning point for a firm that had spent its first year chasing clients one cold call at a time. Account openings went from a few hundred a month to almost 500 [29]. Fifteen years on, that firm, Zerodha, has more than 1.8 crore clients [1], earned a profit of about Rs 4,283 crore in 2025-26 [62] [63], and has never taken a rupee of venture capital [33].

The man behind it is not an IIT or IIM graduate. He did not finish his engineering degree. He spent four years making unsolicited calls to Americans from a call centre at night while trading stocks by day, after blowing up his own trading account. This is that story.

A banker’s son in Shivamogga

Nithin Kamath was born in 1979 in Shivamogga, in central Karnataka, into a Konkani family [47] [35]. His father, U. R. Kamath, “worked his entire life” at Canara Bank [44], which meant regular transfers; the family eventually settled in Bangalore when his father was posted there [46]. His mother, Revathi, taught the veena [2]. Nikhil, his younger brother, would later become his partner.

“Being the son of a bank manager, I learnt about the importance of money at an early age,” Kamath wrote in 2012. “In fact, I had to earn my pocket money right through college.” [34]

He is frank about school. “In school, I was a below average student academically,” he says on his personal website [2]. What caught him instead was the stock market. Some friends in his Bangalore neighbourhood came from Marwari trading families, and through them he discovered shares [35]. “I discovered trading and the markets by accident at the age of 17,” he writes [2]. Most accounts put this at about 1996-97 [41] [40]; an early newspaper profile says 16 [35].

His father gave him his first trading capital [44]. In those pre-internet days newspapers were his only research tool, and he traded mostly small, cheap stocks [34] [41].

Engineering, on paper

He enrolled for engineering at Bangalore Institute of Technology, under Bangalore University [34]. Many profiles say he graduated in 2001. His own account, written in September 2026, is different. He and his friend Karthik Rangappa, he says, were in “the last batch at Bangalore University with the ‘all-carry’ system”, where students could move up years with papers still pending. “I basically had 45-odd subjects to write by the 8th semester, and I never wrote them.” [30]

So the founder of one of India’s most profitable financial firms has, by his own telling, no degree. “No IIM or Harvard,” as one business magazine put it [47].

The first break

Blowing up the account

The early profits did not last. The dotcom bust of 2000-01 “nearly wiped off all that I had earned over the past four-five years”, he wrote in 2012 [34]. YourStory, retelling his story, put the loss at about Rs 5 lakh [43]. His own summary is blunter: “In the early 2000s, I borrowed money and blew up my trading account.” [2]

He also tried, and failed at, a multi-level marketing venture. His father was his first customer for that too [44]. YourStory counts two failed businesses before Zerodha [42].

Night shifts at a call centre

To pay off the debt he took a night job at a call centre serving the US market, selling everything from phones to DVDs by phone [42]. During the day, he kept trading.

“I spent four years at a call centre, making unsolicited calls to people in the US,” he wrote on X in May 2024, after getting a spam call himself. “I guess Karma has a way of biting back.” [45] Most sources date the job to roughly 2001-2005 [42] [39]. He later told The Economic Times: “I was not from a very privileged background… I used to trade in the day and work with the call centre at night.” [39] It was also where he met Seema Patil, who later became his wife [2].

The first client

The break came from a client, not a job. A man who had seen his trading record asked Kamath to manage his money. Accounts differ on who this was: a retired man in one interview [35], a person “who had come back from the US” in another [46]. His website thanks “Prakash my first customer” [2]. What is consistent is what happened next: “I quit my job when I met the first person who asked me to manage their portfolio.” [2]

He set up Kamath Associates, a small advisory and portfolio business. By about 2005 he was knocking on doors trying to sell investment accounts. One of those doors belonged to Karthik Rangappa, who later “helped us build our first website… back when we were called Kamath Associates” and today runs Zerodha’s education arm [30].

A sub-broker at Reliance Money

In 2006 he became a franchisee, or sub-broker, of Reliance Money to formalise the business [2] [39]. That year Venu Madhav, now Zerodha’s chief operating officer, left “a stable, well-paying job at HP to join me back when I was just a sub-broker at Reliance Money”, Kamath wrote in 2026. “I couldn’t even guarantee him a monthly salary.” [31] Nikhil joined around 2007 [46] after quitting his own call-centre job at about 20 [48]. Hanan, a trader friend who would run client support, came in 2008 [13] [2].

Kamath became one of Reliance Money’s largest sub-brokers; at times, YourStory reported, his volumes beat those of the other thousand-odd sub-brokers combined [40]. He also watched something closely. Reliance Money had launched a flat-fee plan in 2007 and then scrapped it [39]. The idea stayed with him: “The effort needed of a broker to put in an order worth Rs 1 lakh or Rs 10 lakh is the same. Then, why should brokers charge more for bigger orders?” [39]

In 2008, as markets crashed, he returned the deposits of his 40-odd advisory clients and decided to become a broker himself [39].

Zero barriers

In 2009, venture capitalists he met were “dismissive” of a cheap broker run from Bengaluru [39]. Many people asked, he later recalled, “who starts a brokerage firm in Bengaluru?” [28]

The brothers paid for it themselves, with personal savings and help from a friend in Singapore [39]; Nikhil traded the remaining funds to extend the runway [13]. The National Stock Exchange helped in a way Kamath still talks about. The exchange gave small brokers a free trading platform, NSE NOW, and “when they realised we didn’t have a lot of money, they even waived our membership fee of ~₹5 lakh,” he wrote. “In many ways, we are around only because of the NSE.” [28] [39]

Zerodha began operations on 15 August 2010, India’s Independence Day [1] [13]. The name joins “zero” and “rodha”, the Sanskrit word for barrier. “Removing all barriers for traders is what we were trying to attempt,” he explained [32]. The pitch: a flat Rs 20 per executed order, however big [39].

It was a hard sell. “Nobody wanted to trade with an unknown entity despite cheaper brokerage,” he said [39]. Six months and about 15,000 cold calls later, Zerodha had only about 1,000 clients [39]. “The biggest challenge for us is credibility, because we charge so less,” he told YourStory in 2012 [40].

Building the empire

Slow years, 2010-2015

The first years were a grind of word of mouth. Zerodha did not advertise; from 2010 it ran a referral programme instead [14]. By September 2014 it had about 42,000 clients and had earned revenue of Rs 37 crore in 2013-14, with about 120 employees, many of them friends from the call-centre days [39].

Three hires from this period shaped what came next. Kailash Nadh, a computer scientist, joined in 2013 and built Zerodha’s in-house technology team; he is now chief technology officer [13] [1]. Karthik Rangappa came in around 2013-14 to write about markets [30] [13]. And on 5 November 2014, Kamath launched Varsity, a free, plain-language online course on stock markets written by Rangappa, open to anyone, client or not [11].

The zero-brokerage bet, 2015

The real turn came at the end of 2015. On 30 November Kamath announced that from 1 December 2015, buying shares for delivery (investing, not trading) would carry zero brokerage. Intraday and futures-and-options (F&O) trades would stay at Rs 20 or 0.01%, whichever was lower [10]. Around the same time Zerodha launched Kite, its own fast trading platform, first released in beta in September 2015 [12], along with Kite Connect, a set of APIs for programmers [10].

Free investing was a deliberate trade-off: Zerodha would earn from active traders and use free delivery to bring in long-term investors. It took about five years to win the first 60,000-odd accounts; after the zero-brokerage move growth sped up sharply [46]. In April 2026 Kamath estimated that clients had saved about Rs 25,620 crore between 2016 and 2025 by not paying brokerage on delivery trades [71].

Around 2015-16 Zerodha also started Rainmatter, a fund and incubator for fintech startups. The early bets included smallcase (portfolios of stocks), Sensibull (an options platform) and Streak (an algo-trading tool) [24]. Coin, a platform for buying direct mutual funds commission-free, followed [1].

India’s No. 1 broker, 2019

By December 2018 Zerodha had 8.47 lakh active clients on the NSE, just ahead of ICICI Securities’ 8.44 lakh. A bootstrapped Bengaluru startup had become India’s largest broker by active clients [49]. “To start a broking firm was probably a little stupid,” Kamath said the following year [41].

In the 2019 annual return of Zerodha Broking Ltd, the promoters held all 10 crore shares: Nithin Kamath 30.91%, Austin Global Ventures 29.91%, Nikhil Kamath 28.91% and Seema Patil 9.97%, with token holdings for their parents [3]. More recent shareholding details have not been widely reported; Zerodha has never raised external capital [33].

The pandemic boom, 2020-2022

When Covid-19 shut India down in 2020, millions of young people opened their first trading accounts. Zerodha was best placed to catch them.

In June 2020 it bought back employee stock options at Rs 700 a share, more than four times book value. That implied a valuation of about Rs 7,000 crore, or roughly US$1 billion: a self-declared unicorn with no investors [52]. “Everyone working in the company thought $1 billion was a cool number to be at,” Kamath said. Zerodha then had about 28 lakh clients and about 1,100 employees [53].

Profits grew fast. Kamath said profit after tax for 2020-21 was “about Rs 1,000 crore” [56]. In 2021-22 revenue reached about Rs 4,964 crore and profit about Rs 2,094 crore; in 2022-23, Rs 6,875 crore and Rs 2,907 crore [55]. In September 2023 he said recent share buybacks valued Zerodha at about Rs 30,000 crore (US$3.6 billion), using 10-15 times profit, and “not the Rs 1 lakh to Rs 2 lakh crores” some people imagined [54].

Throughout, he refused to list the company. “As soon as you have lakhs of conservative retail investors on your cap table, the obligations go up exponentially,” he wrote in 2021, adding that an IPO “is the beginning & not the end” [87].

A different kind of broker

What made Zerodha unusual was less its prices than its restraint.

It does not advertise, does not run a sales team with targets and does not “push people to trade or invest”, Kamath wrote in 2026 [33]. It does not send emails or push notifications nudging people to trade [14]. Instead, from 2020 it added “nudges”, warnings that appear when a client is about to do something risky, such as buying an illiquid penny stock. Penny-stock trading on the platform fell by about 70%, Rest of World reported [96]. In June 2021 it added a “kill switch” that lets traders lock themselves out of a segment. “Over-trading is the biggest destroyer of capital when actively trading the markets,” Kamath wrote [18].

“We, as a business, are taking the opposite stance, saying that people trading less is better for the trader,” he told Rest of World. “If you started with 100,000 rupees, and you lost 100,000 rupees, you will never come back to trade.” [96]

The firm stayed small. It has had about 1,000-1,200 employees for years [15] [95], most of them working remotely after 2020 [93]. “A nice place to work is not a perk we offer. It is kind of a business model in itself,” Kamath said in 2026 [95]. He has paid staff a month’s salary for meeting a year-long fitness goal, with a Rs 10 lakh lucky draw on top. “Sitting is the new smoking,” he said [92].

It was also frugal. In 2022 he said Zerodha had enough money to run for more than 13 years with zero revenue and had always been debt-free. “We have been extremely frugal in how we operate.” [14]

Mutual funds and the money machine, 2023-2024

In August 2023 SEBI granted Zerodha a mutual fund licence, about three and a half years after it applied, for a joint venture with smallcase called Zerodha Fund House, led by Vishal Jain [68]. Its passive index funds and ETFs reached a quarterly average of about Rs 14,448 crore of assets by March 2026; the fund house was still loss-making in 2025-26 [69].

The broking business, meanwhile, hit its peak. For 2023-24 Kamath’s own blog reported revenue of more than Rs 8,370 crore and profit of about Rs 4,700 crore, a profit margin of over 50% [57]. Consolidated regulatory filings, which include other income and gains, showed revenue from operations of Rs 9,372 crore and profit of Rs 5,496 crore [58]. Either way, few Indian companies of any kind earn that much with so few people.

The family took a large share as pay. In 2021 the board approved a ceiling of up to Rs 100 crore a year each for Nithin, Nikhil and Seema Patil [72]. Actual pay in 2022-23 was Rs 72 crore each for the brothers and Rs 36 crore for Patil [74]; in 2024-25 it was Rs 96 crore each for the brothers [60].

Losing the top spot

Growth had a limit. Kamath said in 2023 that active clients had been flat at about 64 lakh for about 18 months [55]. In September 2023, NSE data showed Groww, a venture-funded rival with an app built for first-time investors, had passed Zerodha: 66.3 lakh active clients against Zerodha’s 64.8 lakh [50].

The gap has widened since. In September 2026 Groww had 1.34 crore active NSE clients, about 29% of the market. Zerodha had 67.91 lakh (14.73%), only just ahead of Angel One’s 67.55 lakh [51]. Zerodha says it still accounts for over 15% of Indian retail trading volumes [1].

Rainmatter: the other portfolio

Kamath has said Zerodha sets aside a share of its earnings for startup investments and another share for social and environmental causes [16]. Rainmatter, the investing arm, had invested about Rs 400 crore in more than 80 startups by August 2023, when Zerodha committed another Rs 1,000 crore to it as a “perennial” fund with no fixed exit date [23]. By April 2026 it had put more than Rs 1,500 crore into over 160 startups, including 44 in climate and 41 in health and fitness. “We don’t take board seats,” Kamath said [70].

Recognition

In March 2025 Kamath was named EY Entrepreneur of the Year 2024 for India and went on to represent India at the World Entrepreneur of the Year event in Monaco [36]. He also sits on SEBI’s Secondary Market Advisory Committee and Market Data Advisory Committee [1].

How the wealth is held

Kamath’s fortune is almost entirely his family’s stake in Zerodha, which is unlisted, plus Rainmatter’s investments and accumulated cash. Because there is no market price, published figures are estimates. Hurun put the Kamath brothers jointly at Rs 24,000 crore in 2020 [97]. The Hurun India Rich List 2025 listed “Nithin Kamath & family” at rank 64 with Rs 40,020 crore [98] [99]. Forbes’ real-time estimate on 13 October 2026 was US$4.7 billion [37].

The setbacks and failures

Before Zerodha

The early record is a list of failures: a blown-up trading account built partly on borrowed money, a failed multi-level marketing venture, four years of night shifts to clear the debt, and a VC community that would not fund him [2] [44] [39]. “There is a science to it. I knew I would make up the money,” he later said of the trading losses [43].

The F&O squeeze, 2024-2026

Zerodha’s success rested heavily on active F&O traders. Industry analysis by Inc42 estimated that F&O accounted for nearly 90% of Zerodha’s revenue [67]. In 2024 regulators moved to curb retail options trading.

From 1 October 2024, SEBI’s “true to label” rule ended the volume rebates that exchanges paid brokers like Zerodha, which Kamath said had been about 10% of revenue [64]. Then SEBI’s index-derivatives package cut weekly expiries to one index per exchange, raised contract sizes and tightened margins from November 2024 [21]. Kamath warned of a 30-50% hit [59]. He kept delivery free [100], but by June 2025 Zerodha’s brokerage revenue was down about 40% from a year earlier. “The risk has crystallised,” he wrote [61] [16].

For 2024-25, filings showed revenue down 11.5% to Rs 8,847 crore and profit down 22.9% to Rs 4,237 crore [60]. In 2025-26 profit was flat at about Rs 4,283 crore, but brokerage income fell 10.7% to Rs 2,738 crore and interest income, mainly from margin lending, rose to Rs 2,269 crore [62] [63]. Kamath said revenue “hasn’t really grown in real terms” and that he was uneasy with how fast margin trading was growing [62]. “With broking, we have to keep running just to stand still,” he wrote [17].

In March 2026 Zerodha doubled its fee to Rs 40 per order for some intraday F&O trades where clients’ cash collateral is low, saying it had been funding the gap at a loss [65]. A month later Kamath said 60-70% of F&O volumes come from just 1-2% of traders [66].

Zero1 and other retreats

In April 2026 Zerodha shut Zero1, its personal-finance media and creator platform launched in 2023, citing “a lot of regulatory uncertainty” [85] [86]. And Zerodha lost the No. 1 position by clients to Groww in 2023 and has not regained it [50] [51].

Controversies and allegations

Kamath and Zerodha have faced no criminal case, SEBI adjudication order or court finding of fraud that we could find in public records. The matters below are exchange and ministry penalties, a pay row, platform outages and public disputes. Each is set out with the response and the latest known status.

The Rs 100 crore pay ceiling (2021)

Allegation: In May 2021 Entrackr reported, from regulatory filings, that Zerodha’s board had approved annual pay of up to Rs 100 crore each for Nithin Kamath, Nikhil Kamath and Seema Patil [72]. The figure drew criticism on social media [73].

Response: Kamath clarified that the resolution set a ceiling and that actual pay was lower [73]. He pointed out that Zerodha’s profit for the year was about Rs 1,000 crore and that the firm was also running a Rs 200 crore employee stock buyback [56].

What happened next:

• Filings later showed pay of Rs 72 crore each for the brothers in 2022-23 [74] and Rs 96 crore each in 2024-25 [60].

Status: No regulatory issue arose. Pay remains within the approved limit and is disclosed in annual filings.

Trading platform outages (2019-2026)

Allegation: Traders have repeatedly complained of losses when Zerodha’s Kite platform failed during market hours, including a 35-40 minute outage on an F&O expiry day in August 2019 [78], glitches on 6 November and 4 December 2023 [19], and a January 2024 outage that made #BoycottZerodha trend on X [79]. A Kite outage on 3 February 2026, during a rally after the India-US trade deal, brought fresh demands for compensation [81].

Response: Kamath publicly apologised for the late-2023 incidents, blaming a vendor’s anti-malware update and a faulty geo-IP database update, and asked affected clients to raise tickets for losses [19]. In 2024 he argued that the perception of frequent outages was amplified on social media, and CTO Kailash Nadh said exchange data showed Zerodha had among the fewest issues [80]. Zerodha publishes a list of its own incidents [20].

What happened next:

• In October 2023 a BSE grievance committee found that Zerodha had ignored exchange alerts that its bandwidth use had crossed 70% during a July 2023 glitch, and ordered it to pay one trader Rs 8,225. Zerodha paid but its COO called part of the finding “a blatant mistake” [77].

Status: Complaints are handled case by case; Zerodha has no blanket compensation policy. No regulator has penalised it over outages that we could find.

NSE penalties over “reversal trades” (2025-2026)

Allegation: In a series of disciplinary orders, NSE’s Member Committee examined “reversal trades”: trades in thinly traded options between related client accounts, where prices swing to move money from one account to another. The exchange found Zerodha’s monitoring inadequate in some cases, for example where linked clients traded from matching IP addresses [6]. It imposed penalties of Rs 92.06 lakh (order filed October 2025) [7], Rs 19.02 lakh (May 2026) [8] and Rs 27.21 lakh (August 2026) [9]. The penalties were for weaknesses in Zerodha’s surveillance of its clients, not findings that Zerodha itself manipulated prices.

Response: Zerodha argued before the committee that it cannot always detect such trades when the counterparty is another broker’s client, that prices were within permitted ranges, and that it had blocked payouts and accounts once alerted. The committee accepted this in some cases and rejected it in others [7] [8] [9].

What happened next:

• Separately, a 2024 NSE order on a third-party YouTube video that promoted Zerodha found Zerodha had acted properly and imposed no penalty [5].
• NSE’s member directory lists no SEBI orders against Zerodha Broking [4].

Status: Penalties were imposed by the exchange; we found no record of an appeal to the Securities Appellate Tribunal as of 13 October 2026.

Ministry penalty over a missing CFO (2024)

Allegation: The Registrar of Companies, under the Ministry of Corporate Affairs, found that Zerodha Asset Management had gone 459 days (December 2021 to March 2023) without a chief financial officer, as the Companies Act requires. It fined the company and its officers Rs 23.98 lakh in total, including Rs 4.08 lakh on Kamath as a director [75] [76].

Response: The company had itself applied to settle the lapse. Its CEO said the gap related to the period before the fund house began operations [75].

Status: Penalties were levied in 2024; the matter is closed.

The “Zerodha scam” withdrawal row (2025)

Allegation: In November 2025 investor Aniruddha Malpani said on X that he could withdraw only Rs 5 crore a day from about Rs 42.9 crore in his account and called it a “scam” [82].

Response: Kamath said his payouts had already been processed and that Rs 5 crore is an internal verification threshold because payouts cannot be reversed; larger withdrawals need a ticket [82].

Status: Resolved; no regulatory action followed.

Impersonation and deepfakes (2023-present)

Allegation: This is a case where Kamath and Zerodha are targets, not accused. Fraudsters have run WhatsApp groups impersonating Kamath and COO Venu Madhav, using fake SEBI letters and a fake Kite app [22].

Response: Zerodha has issued public warnings, and in May 2025 Kamath said WhatsApp investment scams had “claimed the most victims” [84]. In December 2023 he posted a deepfake video of himself to warn that AI could defeat online identity checks [83].

Status: Ongoing; warnings continue. As of 13 October 2026 none of the matters above involves a pending criminal case against Kamath.

Giving back

A 25% pledge and a climate foundation

In 2021 the Kamath brothers pledged to give away 25% of their wealth during their lifetimes [88]. Nithin’s main vehicle is the Rainmatter Foundation, which began with a commitment of about US$100 million in January 2021 for climate and ecology work. “What’s the point of fintech, without a planet to live on?” he asked at the time [91]. By September 2024 commitments to it were over Rs 1,000 crore [15]; the foundation now describes a US$200 million commitment across ecology, livelihoods and community work [26]. “Wherever there is a concentration of wealth, the onus has to be to give back,” he wrote in 2022 [14].

To mark Zerodha’s 15th anniversary in September 2025, he announced the Rs 100 crore Zerodha Rewilding Fund. Its first project restores 800 acres near the Tadoba-Andhari tiger reserve in Maharashtra, with the state forest department and Farmers for Forests [25].

Covid relief and rankings

During the pandemic Zerodha set aside Rs 25 crore for Covid relief, including contributions to PM CARES, 15,000 meals a day in Bengaluru, a Covid hospital and a pilot of universal basic income [27]. On the EdelGive Hurun India Philanthropy List, the brothers ranked ninth in 2022 with Rs 100 crore given [89] and gave Rs 110 crore in 2022-23 [90].

Nikhil, not Nithin, signed the Giving Pledge in 2023 [38].

Free knowledge

Kamath’s longest-running gift may be Varsity, launched in 2014 on the principle that market knowledge “should have no ownership” [11]. It remains free, for clients and non-clients alike.

Succession

Kamath has not named a successor. He told Outlook Business in 2025 that he spends his time making sure “there are 10-15 people in the business who understand the philosophy… and the decision-making framework” [94]. The core team today is Nikhil Kamath (co-founder), Kailash Nadh (CTO), Venu Madhav (COO), Seema Patil (director) and Karthik Rangappa (chief of education) [1]. Ownership stays with the founders’ family, and with no outside investors or listing there is no external pressure on the question. “Usually people who come for money, go for money,” he said in the same interview. “The day you compromise on the philosophy, the culture suffers.” [94]

What their journey teaches

Your first failure can be your best research. Kamath lost his savings trading, then spent years watching brokers from the inside as a sub-broker. Zerodha’s flat fee came from what he saw Reliance Money try and abandon [39].

You can grow without outside money if you stay profitable from day one. Zerodha never raised venture capital [33]. “Not having to answer to investors… is a huge advantage,” Kamath said in 2026 [71]. The cost was slower early years; the reward was control.

Giving something away can be the business model. Free equity delivery and free Varsity courses brought in long-term investors that advertising could not [71] [11].

Telling customers to do less can build trust. Nudges, a kill switch and blunt warnings about F&O losses ran against short-term revenue, and Kamath has said less than 1% of active traders earn more than a bank fixed deposit over three years [101] [96] [18]. (For context on what a fixed deposit really earns, see CapitalVia’s look at FD real returns.)

Concentration is a risk even for the best. When regulators curbed F&O, a firm earning most of its money from a small group of active traders saw brokerage income fall. “Market cycles trump a lot of business decisions,” Kamath wrote [16].

A small team is a choice you have to keep making. Zerodha has stayed at about 1,000-1,200 people while serving crores of clients. “I never realised that more people also mean more inefficiencies,” Kamath said [95].

Other self-built fortunes in Indian markets make useful comparisons: Uday Kotak built a broker into a bank, and Radhakishan Damani went from trading floor to retail.

A profile for general reading, based on public records and reporting as of 13 October 2026. Not investment, tax or legal advice.

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28. The role NSE played in Zerodha's early days - nithinkamath.me, Sep 2026
29. The first time we appeared in the press - nithinkamath.me, Sep 2026
30. The Back Office conversation with Karthik - nithinkamath.me, Sep 2026
31. The Back Office with Venu Madhav - nithinkamath.me, Aug 2026
32. The story behind how the name Zerodha came to be - nithinkamath.me, Dec 2021
33. Inside the making of Zerodha - Nithin Kamath (Substack), Jul 2026
34. The Economic Times, 29 Oct 2012 (first-person piece, reposted) - Z-Connect (Zerodha), Oct 2012
35. Nithin is a bull tamer in his own right (The New Indian Express, reposted) - Z-Connect (Zerodha), Jan 2013
36. Nithin Kamath is the EY Entrepreneur of the Year 2024 - EY India, Mar 2025
37. Nithin Kamath (real-time net worth profile) - Forbes, Oct 2026
38. Nikhil Kamath (pledger letter) - The Giving Pledge, Jun 2023
39. Why venture capitalists are flocking Zerodha today - The Economic Times, Sep 2014
40. From trading alone at the age of 17 to starting up Zerodha - YourStory, Nov 2012
41. Meet the Mavericks: Nithin Kamath - YourStory, Jul 2019
42. Matrix Moments: from trading at 17 to working at a call centre - YourStory, Mar 2020
43. The Turning Point: what led Nithin Kamath to launch Zerodha - YourStory, Apr 2020
44. Zerodha's Nithin Kamath acknowledges father's role in the Kamath brothers' success - Storyboard18, Dec 2023
45. 'Karma has a way of biting back': spam calls remind Nithin Kamath of call centre days - Business Today, May 2024
46. New Money Multipliers - Entrepreneur India, Apr 2022
47. No IIM or Harvard: how Nithin Kamath built Zerodha without a management degree - Business Today, Nov 2022
48. From dropout to fintech disruptor: Zerodha's Nikhil Kamath - Al Jazeera, Sep 2021
49. With 8.47 lakh clients, Zerodha takes lead as largest broker in India - YourStory, Jan 2019
50. Groww topples Zerodha to become largest broker in terms of number of clients - Business Standard, Oct 2023
51. Groww adds over 1 lakh active clients in September 2026 - CXO Digitalpulse, Oct 2026
52. Zerodha claims unicorn valuation in ESOPs buyback plan - Inc42, Jun 2020
53. Bootstrapped to billions: Zerodha, a rare profitable fintech, turns unicorn - YourStory, Jun 2020
54. Zerodha valued at $3.6 Bn, says CEO Nithin Kamath - Inc42, Sep 2023
55. Zerodha annual results: Nithin Kamath says 40% yearly jump in revenues in FY23 - Business Today, Sep 2023
56. Stock broking giant Zerodha's FY21 profit more than doubles to Rs 1,000 cr - Business Standard, May 2021
57. Zerodha hits Rs 8,370 Cr revenue with over 50% profit margin in FY24 - Entrackr, Sep 2024
58. Zerodha's revenue nears INR 10,000 Cr mark - Inc42, Dec 2024
59. Zerodha profit jumps 61.5% in FY24; CEO warns of regulatory challenges - Business Standard, Sep 2024
60. Zerodha cash reserve stands at Rs 22,679 Cr in FY25 - Entrackr, Nov 2025
61. Zerodha brokerage revenue drops 40% in Q1 FY26 - Entrackr, Sep 2025
62. Zerodha's bland FY26: net profit up a mere 1% - Inc42, Aug 2026
63. Zerodha marks 16 years with steady profits - YourStory, Aug 2026
64. 'Will have to let go of zero brokerage': Nithin Kamath on SEBI's true-to-label move - Business Today, Jul 2024
65. Zerodha raises F&O charges to Rs 40 per order for certain intraday trades - Inc42, Mar 2026
66. Nithin Kamath says 60-70% of F&O volumes come from just 1-2% traders - Business Today, Apr 2026
67. Zerodha, Angel One, Groww feel the squeeze from SEBI crackdown - Inc42, Oct 2025
68. Zerodha AMC gets mutual fund licence; Vishal Jain to head MF business - Business Standard, Aug 2023
69. Zerodha Fund House nearly triples assets as FY26 loss narrows - CXO Digitalpulse, Aug 2026
70. Zerodha's Rainmatter invests INR 1,500 Cr across 160+ startups - Entrepreneur India, Apr 2026
71. Rs 25,620 crore saved on brokerage: what Nithin Kamath wants you to know - Business Today, Apr 2026
72. Exclusive: Kamath brothers and Seema Patil to get up to Rs 100 Cr as salary - Entrackr, May 2021
73. Zerodha's Nithin Kamath clarifies on Rs100 crore salary after social media criticism - Moneylife, May 2021
74. Rs 72 crore was salary of Zerodha founders in FY 2022-23 - HR Katha, Dec 2023
75. Zerodha along with its founder penalized by ROC for delay in appointing CFO - StudyCafe, Aug 2024
76. Centre slaps Rs 4.08 lakh penalty on Zerodha co-founder Nithin Kamath for failing to appoint CFO - DNA, Aug 2024
77. BSE committee blames Zerodha's inaction for tech glitch - Inc42, Oct 2023
78. F&O traders blindsided by technical glitch on Zerodha's digital platform - Business Standard, Aug 2019
79. Boycott Zerodha trends: users express their disappointment over technical glitch - Storyboard18, Feb 2024
80. Zerodha's 'frequent' tech glitches may be a perception problem, says management - Benzinga, Sep 2024
81. Zerodha down? Kite glitch hits traders as market rallies after India-US trade deal - Outlook Business, Feb 2026
82. 'Zerodha scam': investor flags Rs 5-crore withdrawal rule; Nithin Kamath responds - Business Standard, Nov 2025
83. Zerodha CEO Nithin Kamath shares his own deepfake video, warns about AI threats - Gulf News, Dec 2023
84. Zerodha CEO Nithin Kamath alerts investors about WhatsApp investment scam - Outlook Money, May 2025
85. Zerodha shuts down Zero1 - Entrepreneur India, Apr 2026
86. Zero1 shutdown: what Zerodha's move signals for fintech platforms - Business Today, Apr 2026
87. Amidst IPO frenzy, Nithin Kamath explains why Zerodha isn't going public - OfficeChai, Nov 2021
88. Zerodha founders pledge to donate 25% of their wealth - The CSR Journal, Nov 2021
89. Kamath brothers among India's top 10 individual philanthropists; donations jump 308% - Business Today, Oct 2022
90. Kamath brothers donated Rs 110 cr in FY23: EdelGive Hurun India Philanthropy List 2023 - Business Today, Nov 2023
91. Why Rainmatter decided to set up a $100 million foundation - YourStory, Jan 2021
92. Burn 350 calories and get 1 month's salary: Nithin Kamath offers Rs 10 lakh reward - Business Today, Sep 2022
93. Permanent remote work for 90% of Zerodha's workforce - HR Katha, May 2022
94. Nithin Kamath interview: at the end of the day, you bet on founders - Outlook Business, Feb 2025
95. Nithin Kamath on how Zerodha built an $8 bn business with just 1,000 employees - Outlook Business, Jul 2026
96. Indian brokerage tries to disengage users (South Asia newsletter) - Rest of World, May 2022
97. IIFL Wealth Hurun India Rich List: Kamath brothers top self-made chart with Rs 24,000 cr - Business Today, Oct 2020
98. Ambani tops Hurun India Rich List 2025: top 100 richest Indians - Trak.in, Oct 2025
99. Bengaluru's billionaire list: Azim Premji, Nithin Kamath and others - StartupTalky, Oct 2025
100. Nithin Kamath confirms free equity delivery - Outlook Money, Oct 2024
101. Less than 1% of stock traders make more returns than an FD over a 3-year period: Zerodha CEO - OfficeChai, Jan 2022