Investors saved around Rs 2,000 crore to Rs 20,000 crore as Zerodha waived brokerage charges for equity delivery. In a post on X (formerly Twitter), Nithin Kamath, Founder & CEO of Zerodha, said that the company for the first time decided to charge zero brokerage in December 2015.
Despite having issues in the options business the company stuck to a zero brokerage policy. “Well, it’s almost 10 years since and even though there is some pressure with the options business going down significantly in the last 6 months, we have been able to continue offering Zero brokerage,” said Nithin Kamath in his post.
It’s been around 10 years since we waived off brokerage for equity delivery. Even though there is extreme pressure to change the stance, given option trading volumes are down significantly, we’ve stuck with this so far.
Over the 10 years of being free, our clients have saved… pic.twitter.com/OCnrr8ztXb
— Nithin Kamath (@Nithin0dha) March 21, 2025
The founder of the company was calculating the savings investors were able to make in the past 9 years and the number came down in a range of Rs 2,000 to Rs 20,000 crore. These numbers can be seen from different angles as well like, the company lost these many crores after switching to a free brokerage policy. However, it can be debated that the move helped the company acquire the lion’s share in the brokerage business, but that’s for another day.
“This move was to change our image from a broker just for speculation, which was the case back then. A lot of people (sometimes even I) wondered if this would just be a short-term experiment or if we could go on like this forever,” said Kamath. “By the way, Zerodha = Zero + Rodha (barriers in Sanskrit) and not Zero + brokerage that many think.”
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