Recently, Zerodha's founder and CEO Nithin Kamath stated on LinkedIn that more than 1.6 crore Indians trust Zerodha with trading and investing.
He explained that about 30% of these investors signed up on the trading platform through referrals and recommendations by other Zerodha customers.
Nithin wrote, “Almost 30% of these investors came to us through referrals by other Zerodha customers.”
Currently, Zerodha is handling investors’ assets of Rs 6 lakh crore.
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NO ADVERTISEMENTS EVER
Further in his post, Nithin Kamath made another important claim.
He said that Zerodha might be the only B2C company that achieved these numbers without engaging in any advertising activity.
In his words, “We may be the only B2C company to have reached this scale without ever advertising.”
In fact, the Zerodha CEO also stated that not advertising actually helped the trading platform in achieving this scale.
But how?
By keeping intact Zerodha's policy of not pushing or convincing people to trade.
Nithin Kamath reflected, “In hindsight, not advertising has helped us stay true to our philosophy of not pushing people to trade, no spam, etc.”
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INDIA AND ADVERTISEMENTS
According to Kamath, the country's market is a difficult one to crack. He believes advertising Zerodha would've only ended up in them giving a big chunk of their profits to the likes of Google and Meta
He concluded by writing, “...even if we had advertised, we would have given up a lot of our profits to Google, Facebook/Meta, etc.”
COMPETITORS
Zerodha competes with other trading platforms and applications like Groww, Angel One, Interactive Brokers, and Upstox.
It becomes pertinent to note here that Zerodha's Indian competitors like Groww and Upstox engage in advertisements, although they do have the disclaimer stating, “Mutual funds are subject to market risks. Read all the related documents carefully before investing.”
For instance, just one month ago, Upstox released an advertisement video titled, “Upstox Financial Gym: Your financial fitness trainer 💪.” It drew a comparison between people wanting to go to the gym and also wanting to get into the market and start investing — but keep delaying or postponing it for one reason or another.
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