Nikhil Kamath, on Friday, clarified that he has never had any WhatsApp group, has not “hand-picked” any stock as advertised by a group that claims to assist people in picking the right stocks.
He also urged people to use a little “common sense”.
“Scam alert, this is obviously not from me, I have never had or have any WhatsApp groups, nor do I give tips etc. Please report these… Also to all the brands who reach out, I don't do paid promotions/collaborations/ads/paid speaking engagements of any kind. Please stop spamming, and everyone use a little common sense please,” he said along with an image of the scam ad.
The scam ad claimed to handpick stocks that would rise in April, and asked investors to join their WhatsApp group that would share their picks of reliable stocks every day.
“First 1,000 members get it for free,” the group said in the ad.
One of India’s youngest billionaires, Nikhil Kamath, co-founder of Zerodha, has famously been trading since his teenage years. He, along with his brother Nithin Kamath, started online stock broking company Zerodha in 2010.
Before taking on trading full-time, Nikhil Kamath had worked in a call centre. Portion of the salary he received from the call centre was used for trading, Kamath had said in his YouTube show ‘WTF is Bangalore’. He said that for a while he used to work in the call centre at night and do trading in the morning.
His brother Nithin Kamath has acknowledged in the past that his younger brother is a much better trader than he is. “I quickly realised that Nikhil is a better trader than I am because at that point of time we were trading money and I was also doing this side hustle of broking business. In 2008-09 I said if he is better at trading than me then why not he continue trading and maybe I can go to broking permanently. So in 2010 we started Zerodha. It started off as…I mean it was not meant to be what it is today. I remember sending the first e-mail I sent saying that if we arrive at 10,000 customers, we have arrived in life…now we are at 1.1 crore customers,” he had said in ‘WTF is with Nikhil Kamath’ podcast last year.