My family ran a brokerage in Calcutta. Old school. I was taught to view every transaction from a client servicing point of view first, revenue second. Brokers like lawyers, like doctors — you don’t solicit by selling fear or greed.
I shut it down in my early twenties. Not because it was losing money. I just couldn’t run it the way I believed it should be run.
Then I found Nithin and Zerodha. The philosophies aligned from day one. No notifications designed to make you trade more, no ads. Zero brokerage on delivery, even though every other broker charges for it. That’s ₹25,620 crore in revenue we chose not to collect since 2016.
No external capital, so no investors to show growth numbers to. And yet 25–30% of accounts still come from referrals.
“Don’t do unto others what you don’t want done unto you” — that’s not a poster on the wall here, it’s how the place actually runs.