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Nithin Kamath

@Nithin0dha907,554 subscribers

Founder & CEO @Zerodha @Rainmatterin Learning at @RainmatterOrg Musings on business & life: https://t.co/gQi9cu6E5h. Views are personal, Nothing is advice.

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This is how we get our drinking water. 😬 These clips were captured by robots built by Solinas Integrity. These robots go inside water lines to spot leakages, contamination, and other issues, which is impossible to do humanly.

This is how we get our drinking water. 😬 These clips were captured by robots built by Solinas Integrity. These robots go inside water lines to spot leakages, contamination, and other issues, which is impossible to do humanly.

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When we were starting Zerodha, we didn't have any money to spend on advertising or customer acquisition. So the only real growth lever we had was word of mouth. We had to build products and services that people liked enough to tell their friends and family about. Very early on, people who traded with us started referring Zerodha to their friends, colleagues, and family. As a way of saying thank you, we started our referral program. The idea was simple: if you referred someone to Zerodha, we would share 10% of the brokerage generated by that referral with you, for as long as they traded with us. No ifs and buts. No hidden conditions. And it worked. Until we had to stop the referral program in 2024 due to exchange regulations, close to 30% of our accounts were coming through referrals. But even this understated the true impact of word of mouth. Most people don’t log in to a referral portal or share a referral link. They simply tell a friend, colleague, or family member: “You should open an account with Zerodha. I use it and like it.” Those people then come directly to our website and open an account. So while the attributed referral number was around 30%, the real number was probably well north of 50%. Even after we stopped offering referral incentives, about 15–20% of new accounts continued to come from referrals. That, for us, has always been the biggest validation. We now have regulatory clarity and have restarted referrals. We are also reinstating referral benefits for all old clients who had referred people earlier. This means that anyone who has ever referred clients to Zerodha will get 10% of the brokerage generated by those referrals for as long as they trade with us. You can visit and tell your friends and family about Zerodha. Given that we don’t charge for investing in stocks, ETFs, bonds, and direct mutual funds, and given that AMC is free or nearly zero for most customers under BSDA, there's no reason for you not to refer someone who wants to start saving and investing🙂 Along with Kite, Coin by Zerodha, Console, Varsity, TradingQnA, Tijori, Sensibull - India's No:1 Options Trading Platform, Ditto Insurance, Zerodha Fund House, and the rest of the ecosystem we’ve built around investors and traders, we hope Zerodha remains a good place for your friends and family to begin their investing journey.

Nithin Kamath

68,949 görüntüleme • 8 gün önce

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Nik has been on a roll, and for someone who started ~50 episodes ago and does it as a side gig, he has really improved over time. Full pro-podcaster he has become. 😀 Goes on to show that the odds of success are much higher when you build things around what you love. Nikhil Kamath is curious, looks good, listens, and speaks well, and the magic sauce is launching the podcast at the right time when podcasting in India was just taking off. The thing that stood out to me was what Elon Musk said beautifully towards the end of the podcast, and also describes much of what Nik does with WTF, which I’m proud of as a brother. “I’m a big fan of anyone who wants to build. Anyone who aims to make more than they take has my respect. That’s really the core principle: strive to be a net contributor to society. It’s similar to the pursuit of happiness. If you want to create something valuable or financially successful, the goal shouldn’t be the money itself. Instead, focus on providing genuinely useful products and services. When you do that, the financial rewards tend to follow naturally. Just like happiness—you don’t chase it directly; you pursue the things that lead to it: fulfilling work, learning, friendships, loved ones. The happiness is a byproduct. It might sound obvious, but anyone starting a company should expect to work extremely hard, accept that there’s a real chance of failure, and stay focused on ensuring that the output is worth more than the input. Are you creating value? That’s what matters. Make more than you take.”

Nithin Kamath

532,283 görüntüleme • 6 ay önce

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When it comes to personal finance, people somehow keep making the same mistakes over and over again. There’s very little creativity in the mistakes people make. Take investing. Pretty much every influencer, every serious finance writer, and the financial media have been screaming for years: don’t mix insurance with investments. ULIPs are usually a bad idea. Endowment policies are usually a bad idea. And yet, ULIP sales continue to grow and endowment plans continue to be sold. People continue to fall for the same pitches, despite all the articles, videos, and excel sheets explaining why these products are bad. The same applies to health insurance, though I have a little more sympathy there. Health insurance is genuinely complicated. There are tiny clauses, room rent caps, waiting periods, exclusions, and conditions that most people don’t fully understand and then they find out the hard way, when they still have to pay out of pocket despite having a policy. But with products like ULIPs and endowment plans, there’s no excuse. These are not impossibly complicated products. Even a cursory Google search will tell you the problem. And today, in 2026, you can just ask ChatGPT or Claude whether a product is a good idea, and they’ll usually show you the math, explain the catches, and give you pointers on what to do. And yet, people still keep falling for the same thing. Prateek Singh from Zero1 by Zerodha has made a really nice video on some of the biggest mistakes Indians make with investing and health insurance. It’s worth watching, and sharing with your friends and family too.

Nithin Kamath

76,692 görüntüleme • 1 ay önce

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We keep hearing that retail Indians are borrowing too much, but despite all the noise, credit penetration in India remains relatively low and a significant population remains credit-starved. That said, to the extent that individual Indians do have credit, I think Bajaj Finance has done more to improve access than even many of the bigger banks. In a lot of ways, they've been pioneers. They took loan approvals from 3–5 days to 3 hours to, eventually, 3 minutes. They are also great at leveraging data. They track how old your appliances are and figure out your refrigerator is about to need replacing before you've even thought about it, and walking into Croma or Vijay Sales with a list of 50,000 customers ready to buy. Bajaj Finance knew you better than your retailer did. Having said that, businesses like Bajaj Finance and even Zerodha have had it relatively easy over the past decade. As India went online and consumers got access to easy credit and the ability to invest easily, we kind of rode that wave. But as the saying goes, success attracts competition. With all the new players now wanting to be lenders, including us (Zerodha Capital ) with our secured business, the future will be interesting, to say the least. Almost done with Episode 2 of The Ken's Intermission, and this one is on the giant that is Bajaj Finance, what it took to build that machine, and what it means for the future of credit in India. It’s free to watch. Link in comments. Disclosure: Zerodha had a small part in the making of Intermission.

Nithin Kamath

52,895 görüntüleme • 1 ay önce

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India has a rich business history. Almost none of it has been documented. This apathy applies broadly, but especially to business, finance, and markets, and it's something I've found genuinely frustrating for a long time. So I'm really happy that the team at The Ken decided to take this on. I've been bugging them about it for years. The way I consume content has changed a lot since AI. The internet is flooded with generated slop, and it's made me much more deliberate. I actively seek out things where the effort and craft are obvious. Their new podcast, Intermission, belongs in that category. The care, intention, and craft of the people behind it are immediately apparent. Real curiosity, real effort, real craftsmanship. That matters more now than ever; the internet is drowning in AI-generated slop, and it's making high-quality, effortful work stand out more, not less. The first episode is on Asian Paints, and it's absolutely brilliant. Rohin, Seetha, and the rest of the Ken team have clearly poured a lot into it. One thing that stood out: Asian Paints had a deliberate strategy of hiring people at below-market salaries, and how genuinely they took care of those people once there was a real cultural fit and alignment with the company's long-term vision. The episode is free and live on YouTube and Spotify. Worth your time. Link in the comments. (Disclosure: Zerodha had a small role in making this happen, which I'm glad about, because I think it's important for the history of Indian business to be documented and freely available.)

Nithin Kamath

77,191 görüntüleme • 2 ay önce

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Access to information is what drives prices in markets. While there's no shortage of information today, the real challenge is figuring out what actually matters and getting it in time. Exchange filings, earnings, management commentary, and conference calls. When something material comes out, prices react almost instantly. The faster you get the information, the better your odds of reacting sensibly. Institutions and high-frequency trading desks scan exchange filings the moment they're published and act within milliseconds. Retail investors usually find out much later—by then, the price has often already moved. Tijori just released the WhatsApp alerts feature. It tracks exchange filings, earnings releases, conference calls, management guidance, verified company tweets, and anything that could materially impact a stock. The moment something is published, it's summarised using AI and sent to you on WhatsApp within seconds. For traders, this means getting access to critical filings during market hours, well before traditional news or media picks them up. For investors, it’s a simpler way to stay informed without having to search for news for each stock or rely on social media commentary. And even if you’re just getting started with investing, work in a company, or run a business, it’s a useful way to track competitors. Follow companies in a sector and get real-time updates of their key announcements and actions. You can enable alerts by visiting the Tijori Alerts website (link in comments) or directly from the Kite Fundamentals widget.

Nithin Kamath

114,197 görüntüleme • 5 ay önce