Nithin Kamath & Nikhil Kamath on Disruptive Pricing

Zerodha opened for business on 15 August 2010 with the goal of dismantling barriers traders and investors faced in India around cost, support and technology; the name itself fuses the English word zero with the Sanskrit rodha, meaning barrier — a thesis turned into a brand identity.

The company describes itself as having pioneered the discount broking model in India and, by its own account, is today the country's largest stock broker, attributing scale to disruptive pricing and in-house technology rather than to advertising or outside capital.

Between 2004 and 2010, he operated as a sub-broker under a Reliance Money franchise called Kamath Associates, offering portfolio advisory services and trading on his own account — a period that exposed him to the frictions, opaque pricing and poor service that traditional brokerages forced on Indian retail investors.

In 2010, the brothers launched Zerodha and introduced India to the discount-broking model: a flat twenty-rupee fee per executed trade, irrespective of size, replacing the percentage-based commissions that had long been the industry default and that disproportionately penalised active traders.

The original plan was modest: a boutique broker for the small set of highly active online traders who, like the Kamaths, were overpaying in fees and getting opaque service — never a unicorn ambition, simply a way to serve a niche the incumbents were ignoring.