Nithin Kamath

Nithin Kamath, in 5 chapters.

1. Ch 01

   Trading between calls

   At 17, Nithin Kamath was working a night-shift call-centre job in Bengaluru and trading equities by day on a tiny account his father funded reluctantly. He blew it up twice. The second time taught him something more durable than risk management: the brokerage industry made money whether the customer won or lost.

2. Ch 02

   ₹5 lakh and a heretical idea

   In 2010 Nithin and his brother Nikhil launched Zerodha with ₹5 lakh — flat brokerage of ₹20 per trade, regardless of size, when the rest of the industry was charging a percentage of turnover. Banks refused to integrate. Customers thought it was a scam. The team grew through word of mouth among day-traders who actually did the math.

3. Ch 03

   Building the broker the customer wanted

   Kite, Coin, Console, Streak, Sensibull — Zerodha became less a broker and more a platform of micro-products built around traders. Every release was financed by retained earnings; no external investor ever appeared on the cap table. By 2020, Zerodha had become India's largest broker by active clients, surpassing every legacy institution.

4. Ch 04

   Rainmatter and the long compound

   Profits got recycled into Rainmatter, an in-house fintech incubator that backed True Beacon, smallcase, Ditto and dozens of others. The thesis: India's financial ecosystem was bigger than any single broker, and the largest returns over a decade would come from compounding optionality across the stack.

5. Ch 05

   The stroke, and the next chapter

   In early 2024, Nithin disclosed he had suffered a mild stroke. The disclosure itself — public, calm, instructive — was characteristic. He kept building. The unfinished story is what a profitable, founder-controlled financial platform looks like in a country still figuring out its market structure.