‘I quickly realised that Nikhil is a better trader than I am’: Nithin Kamath on the origins of Zerodha

Zerodha founder and CEO Nithin Kamath said that he realised in the early days of trading that his brother and Zerodha co-founder Nikhil Kamath is a better trader than he is. He said that he moved on to broking before starting Zerodha, and Nikhil Kamath continued as a trader.

Speaking at WTF is with Nikhil Kamath podcast’s latest episode, ‘WTF is Health’, with Nithin Kamath, actor Suniel Shetty, and Myntra and Cult.fit founder Mukesh Bansal as guests, the Zerodha founder said that Zerodha was not meant to be what it is today.  

“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 said. 

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Nithin Kamath said that they moved to Bengaluru in 1996, from where he completed his schooling and telecommunications engineering. “First years were all the common Physics, Chemistry, and Math. The first class in my third year they were trying to teach us signals and systems. I was like ‘what is happening’. That was the last I saw of my college,” he said. 

The Zerodha founder said that he was introduced to trading after that. “Back in the day I used to work in the Weekender showrooms, and then I did multilevel marketing. I was one of the first few guys doing multi-level marketing – this was in the late 90s,” he added. 

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Speaking about the origins of Zerodha, Nithin Kamath said that around 2001, he went bust trading and had to join a call centre, where he worked for 3-4 years. “Nikhil is 7 years younger so he picked trading the markets much before I did in terms of my age. By 15-16 he was already trading. I worked in a call centre between 2001-05. I learnt all my life skills at the call centre. I think the real skill set I learnt was selling on the phone. Even today as businessmen you are constantly selling. Quit in 2005 and started a franchisee of a bigger brokerage firm,” he said. He went on to start Zerodha in 2010. 

Nithin Kamath, along with Zerodha, also runs the Rainmatter fintech fund, and the Rainmatter Foundation that was set up to give back to the society. 

Earlier too, he had said in his blog that they started Zerodha as a small team, with no pedigree education, no background in tech, and no experience but only a passion for capital markets. Zerodha is the largest retail brokerage firm in India – something he said that they achieved without advertising or raising any external capital or debt. “It took us a slow and steady 10 years along with a lot of luck,” he had said in the blog. 

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