Nithin Kamath
@Nithin0dha • 1,056,953 subscribers
Founder & CEO @Zerodha @Rainmatterin Learning at @RainmatterOrg Musings on business & life: https://t.co/gQi9cu6E5h. Views are personal, Nothing is advice.
Shorts
Videos
Around 80% of our orders come from mobile. Personally, I still don’t understand how people manage to trade intraday from a phone. 🙂 That said, Trade from Charts (TFC) on mobile has been one of the most requested features. It’s now available on TradingView charts on Kite. With TFC, you can place orders, drag to modify pending orders, and track open positions directly on the chart.
Nithin Kamath393,372 просмотров • 15 дней назад
Bangalore produces around 7,000 tonnes of waste a day, roughly 3,000 tonnes of that is wet waste. All of it has to be collected, segregated, and processed every single day. A lot of it still ends up badly treated or in a landfill. We got to know the Hasiru Dala Innovations team a few years ago. They've spent years doing the thankless part of this, collecting and segregating waste at scale. But wet waste has remained a problem. Dry waste has buyers. Wet waste goes bad too quickly to store, and composting it usually loses money. Carbon Masters takes that wet waste and turns it into biogas you can cook with. More importantly, they've made a business out of it. Put the two together, and it's fairly obvious. Hasiru Dala has the waste and knows how to sort it. Carbon Masters knows how to generate economic value out of it by generating biogas and organic manure. This problem goes beyond Bengaluru's garbage. India imports about 60% of our LPG and half our natural gas. Turning our own waste into fuel is about as self-reliant as it gets. We need more people working on hard problems like this. That’s also why we’ve backed both Hasiru Dala Innovations and Carbon Masters through Rainmatter by Zerodha. We spent some time at their Harohalli plant to understand how it all fits together for our latest Rainmatter Original. If you've ever wondered where the waste from our homes actually goes, this is worth a watch (full episode link in comments).🙂
Nithin Kamath177,914 просмотров • 12 дней назад
The fancier a financial product looks, the bigger the catch usually is. Prateek Singh and Zero1 by Zerodha do a nice job explaining this using leasing vs buying a car. A lower monthly payment can make leasing look like an obvious deal, but once you account for upfront costs, restrictions, and what you actually own at the end, the math looks very different. I think this is true for most financial products. If it takes more than two sentences to explain how a product makes money and where the risk sits, you should probably stay away. Boring is usually better. 🙂
Nithin Kamath111,126 просмотров • 10 дней назад
It's been almost 20 years since I got my Airtel connection, and I've easily paid them more than Rs. 25 lakh in that time. I can't think of any other business that has made even close to this much money from me. Now the reason why I am saying this is I was watching the latest episode of the Intermission by The Ken. In case you haven't checked it out, it's a wonderful show on the history of some of the biggest businesses in India. Their latest episode is about Airtel and Rohin, and Seetharaman traced the entire Airtel journey, and I didn't realize that Airtel has had many, many near-death experiences and yet always came out stronger to be the business that it is today.
Nithin Kamath764,280 просмотров • 2 месяцев назад
I met Karthik Rangappa 🇮🇳 sometime around 2005. I was trying to sell him an international investing account. I remember going to his office, and we hit it off almost instantly. Later, he helped us build our first website through a friend. This was back when we were called Kamath Associates. He then came to work with us for a bit before going to France to pursue his master's in finance. He came back and was working on financial education when, in 2013, I reached out and asked him to come build that piece for us. The fact that Zerodha is known and respected for all our financial education wouldn't have been possible without Karthik and Varsity. What's crazy is that even after 13 years, he still responds to all the queries on Varsity. Over the last three years, he has found a way to step it up a notch and make Varsity much more impactful, with help from everyone on the team, through text, video, live sessions, and all the other offline initiatives. By the way, we were both in the last batch at Bangalore University with the "all-carry" system. This meant you could keep carrying first-semester subjects without clearing them, all the way until the 8th semester and even later. I basically had 45-odd subjects to write by the 8th semester, and I never wrote them. Karthik had something like 36 left, but unlike me, he went back and cleared all of them after the 8th semester. 🥶 Full respect for that. You don't find many people who can do that. Not once in all these years have our discussions been about how Zerodha benefits from Varsity. For example, we have millions of people whose email IDs are registered on Varsity, and we haven't even bothered to check whether they are Zerodha customers. I guess that fact that we have no agenda has been the secret to Varsity's success. Watch the full conversation on the Zerodha YouTube channel, link in comments.
Nithin Kamath96,780 просмотров • 17 дней назад
The fact that ITC started diversifying away from its main tobacco business into hotels and other businesses after almost 70 years of existence was an immense feat of foresight. Especially considering ITC was never a founder-driven company. They knew tobacco was extremely harmful to health and addictive. When something is bad for people but difficult to ban outright, governments invariably keep regulating and taxing it more. Over time, the taxes become so high and the revenues so significant that the government itself ends up in a strange place: ban it or continue taxing it? I can’t help but see a parallel with the broking industry.😬 F&O trading is bad for almost 99% of retail traders. It is unlikely to be banned outright, but regulation will probably keep getting tighter, and taxes like STT will probably keep going higher. Running a business in an industry with constant government scrutiny over consumer protection is not easy, to say the least. The risk isn’t just economic, but that regulators can ban entire business models almost overnight. So yeah, the only thing we can do is keep diversifying our business while the core business is still doing well. Was listening to Intermission by The Ken, an episode on ITC, and this thought stuck with me.
Nithin Kamath163,654 просмотров • 1 месяц назад
Yesterday night, we had lagorimusic play at our 16th anniversary, and the band was mad! Still crooning!😬
Nithin Kamath190,611 просмотров • 1 месяц назад
Taking a loan has never been easier. There is almost no friction between wanting something and borrowing to pay for it. The problem is that income is limited, while the list of things we want is endless. And often, it isn’t even the purchase we want as much as the momentary thrill of buying it. We are taught how to earn and save, but learning how to spend is just as important. When an impulse purchase becomes an EMI, you are committing future income even before it hits your account. The excitement of spending fades in days, but the debt stays for years. Borrowing to invest in a home, education, or business makes sense. Borrowing for lifestyle consumption locks you into a loop that leaves no breathing room when an emergency hits. In this video, Zero1 by Zerodha looks at why household debt in India is rising, how to assess whether your debt is manageable, and practical ways to pay it down. Congratulations to Prateek Singh, Swati Sharma, and the team on crossing 800,000 subscribers.
Nithin Kamath120,888 просмотров • 1 месяц назад
For the last 45–60 minutes of every day, my unwinding routine has been sitting with Seema and Kiaan while they read. I still can't seem to read a physical book myself. There's some kind of mental block, so I usually listen to an audiobook or a podcast instead. That said, I do think reading a physical book is probably better. It demands your full attention in a way that very little else does. One thing that's made a surprisingly big difference to my sleep is having a proper wind-down routine. An hour before bed, all screens go off (other than the audiobook or podcast), and I try to get to bed at the same time every night. It's amazing how much consistency and a simple routine can improve sleep. Maybe the next challenge is finally getting myself to finish a physical book. Seema and Kiaan recently took part in the India Reads Aloud initiative by Turning Pages, which is trying to get more children to discover the joy of reading. Full video link in comments.
Nithin Kamath117,485 просмотров • 1 месяц назад
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 Kamath532,822 просмотров • 9 месяцев назад
Akshayakalpa has 13 years of data showing that simply introducing bee boxes increases the average coconut yield per farm by 20%. It’s such a massive win-win that they’ve now integrated 7,500 bee boxes across all their farms. Shashi from Akshayakalpa Organic recently brought over two bee boxes for my home to get us started with beekeeping. In this clip (full video in comments), he walks through how incredibly simple it is to set up a bee home, even in smaller or semi-urban spaces. The bigger takeaway here is about how we view sustainability. We often look for grand, complex technological solutions to environmental issues. But the reality is that our survival is deeply tied to basic, interconnected ecosystems. Without pollinators, our food systems collapse; roughly a third of what we eat depends entirely on them. Taking care of them isn't just a good deed; it's an absolute necessity for our own survival. And I think education is the key, which maybe the bee boxes in urban spaces can do. Can’t be prouder of everything that the Akshayakalpa team is doing for improving the quality of life of farmers, their economics, their cows, and everything else.
Nithin Kamath152,549 просмотров • 2 месяцев назад
One of the most basic steps in personal finance is making sure you and your family have adequate health insurance. This is especially important for parents, many of whom bought policies years ago and have kept renewing them even as hospital costs have gone up significantly. Ditto Insurance has put together a simple checklist to help you review your parents’ health insurance and figure out whether the cover they have today is actually adequate. It covers the key things to look for in a policy, the clauses that can hurt during a claim, and when it may make sense to upgrade or switch.
Nithin Kamath58,067 просмотров • 1 месяц назад
I still wonder what made Venu Madhav call me back in 2006 to ask, “Is there something I can do?” At the time, there was zero line of sight, I couldn't even guarantee him a monthly salary. Yet he walked away from a stable, well-paying job at HP to join me back when I was just a sub-broker at Reliance Money😬 Zerodha wouldn’t be Zerodha today without him running pretty much all of our operations, compliance, and more over the years. Moments like this are why I credit so much of our success to luck. You can work hard, take risks, and do everything right, but at the end of the day, someone like Venu still has to decide to make that phone call🙂 Watch the full episode on the Zerodha YouTube channel. Link in comments.
Nithin Kamath66,922 просмотров • 1 месяц назад
Imagine this: A stranger approaches you and asks to use your phone to make an emergency call. Most well-meaning people would probably hand over their phone. But this is a new scam. From intercepting your OTPs to draining your bank accounts, scammers can cause serious damage without you even realizing it. In this video, we , explain how these scammers operate, who they target, and, most importantly, how you can protect yourself.
Nithin Kamath839,348 просмотров • 1 год назад
We, Zerodha, have ~40k NRI customers with an average account value of ₹40L, nearly 10x our overall average of ₹3.6L for resident accounts. Most of them opened accounts the hard way, with physical paperwork. If onboarding were fully online, this base would be much larger. SEBI recently made changes that have allowed us to significantly simplify Non-PIS NRI accounts: they now work like resident accounts, with fully online Aadhaar-based onboarding (when visiting India) and intraday, BTST, and F&O access with no need for a CP code. We've also reduced the brokerage from ₹100 to ₹50 per order. For context: NRIs can open NRO (without PIS) or NRE accounts to invest in India. NRE accounts allow repatriation of funds to your country of residence, but are more complex to operate. NRO (Non-PIS) accounts are simpler to open and operate, though repatriation is capped at USD 1 million per year. Hoping to see more NRI capital flowing back into Indian businesses.🤞
Nithin Kamath338,566 просмотров • 8 месяцев назад
We have been using Zerodor (Ekam Eco Solutions Pvt. Ltd.) for the men’s urinals at our offices for the last six months or so. Our water bills are down 50%—we did not expect it to be this much. It seems like a no-brainer for offices, restaurants, etc., where we have managed washrooms. They were on Shark Tank India around a year back. Here is how it works. We liked the product because they are doing whatever is necessary to preserve water, which has become supercritical. We are supporting them through Rainmatter by Zerodha. Check out the blog for more details.
Nithin Kamath750,053 просмотров • 1 год назад
A lot of Zerodha customers don't know that you can set up SIPs for stocks and ETFs, just like mutual funds. SIPs are probably the easiest way to bring some discipline to investing. We’ve had Stock SIPs on Kite for a while, but the process of setting one up could have been better. We've now introduced an all-new Stock SIP flow on Kite web. You can add stocks or ETFs while creating an SIP, choose between quantity-based and amount-based SIPs, and allocate the investment amount across multiple stocks or ETFs. For example, say you want to invest ₹10,000 every month in the Nifty TOP100CASE ETF. You can simply create an amount-based SIP for ₹10,000 and set the schedule. Or, if you want to invest across multiple stocks or ETFs, you can add them to the same SIP and decide how the ₹10,000 should be split between them. For amount-based SIPs, you can also automate funding using UPI Autopay. Coming to the Kite app soon.
Nithin Kamath65,674 просмотров • 1 месяц назад
8 years back, I spoke to jack schwager, the man behind the Market Wizards series. Sandeep Rao - SEBI Reg. RA🖖 spoke to him again recently on In The Money, and it was an interesting conversation. Market Wizards is probably the only book I've read multiple times when I was trading actively. The one thing that stood out to me from the video was the debate between systematic vs. discretionary trading. There's a common assumption that the best traders are rules-based, meaning they follow a fixed set of rules. The logic is that this helps them keep their emotions in check so they can follow the signals dispassionately. But what Jack found among the traders he interviewed was that almost all of them were discretionary traders. They had rules, but they knew when not to follow them. Meaning, they knew when their approach wasn't working and when they had to change the "rules" they were following. The one purely systematic trader he ever profiled kept changing his systems. He once showed Jack the equity curve of the original system he made his first money on. It went straight up while he traded it, and straight down after he abandoned it. If he had stuck to it with blind discipline, he would have been wiped out. At the very least, what this shows is that there isn't just one way to make money. There are numerous approaches that work, and you ultimately have to figure out what works for you and stick with that approach until it stops working, because nothing works all the time. People change, the markets change, and so do the strategies. Full episode link in comments.
Nithin Kamath72,147 просмотров • 1 месяц назад
This is my first long conversation in a very, very long time. The idea was to talk about all the things that make Zerodha what it is today, because a lot of people don’t really know how differently Zerodha has been built compared to most other companies. We’ve never raised external capital. We don’t advertise. We don’t have a sales team with sales targets. We don’t do much marketing. We don’t push people to trade or invest. And we have a relatively small team that has remained at roughly 1,000 people since around 2018–19, even though the business has grown five or six times since then. In this conversation, I spoke about all these things and more: how we think about growth, risk, competition, and the future of Zerodha. This is also the beginning of a new series where we want to shine a spotlight on the people who have made Zerodha what it is today. A lot of them aren’t very well known, so the idea is to put them on the spot and tell their stories. Check out the full conversation on the Zerodha YouTube channel. The link is in the comments.
Nithin Kamath81,994 просмотров • 2 месяцев назад