Nithin Kamath & Nikhil Kamath on White-Space Creation

Rainmatter, Zerodha's fintech fund and incubator, has invested in multiple startups with the explicit aim of expanding India's capital markets — a use of promoter cash that doubles as ecosystem-building and reinforces the firm's bet on financialisation as a multi-decade trend.

Karthik Rangappa, who single-handedly wrote Varsity, runs investor education at Zerodha; the decision to publish a large, free educational programme was both a brand move and a structural answer to the information asymmetry that had historically kept Indian retail investors away from markets.

The note doubles down on Rainmatter's mandate to back Indian founders building for India, with Kamath arguing that current geopolitical conditions make homegrown startup support more important than ever — a thesis that repositions the firm's incubation arm as a national-strategy lever, not merely a corporate venture fund.

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.