There are more than 250 registered brokers, but the Top 10 Stock Brokers in India command nearly 70% of the market share.
A few years ago, the industry was dominated by ‘Full Service Brokers’ like ICICI, HDFC and Sharekhan.
But August of 2010 changed it all.
A 30-year-old entrepreneur Nitin Kamath launched Zerodha and revolutionised stock broking in India.
The old brokers were charging high brokerage for every transaction. Zerodha made it absolutely free if people were buying stocks for delivery (buy and hold for 2 days or more).
It was the kind of revolution that Mukesh Ambani and Jio did in the telecom space.
Both knew Indian love anything that’s free or very cheap. The rest is history.
Today, 10 year after Zerodha was launched – the company has more than 23 lakh customers. That’s two times more than the second biggest player – ICICI Direct.
Once the leader in the stock broking space, ICICI Direct is facing tough competition from ‘discount brokers’ like Zerodha, Upstox and 5 Paisa.
The trend of increase in number of customers each month, suggests Upstox will soon beat ICICI.
ICICI has reduced its brokerage and is also giving out good offers, but the ‘discount brokers’ are aggressively marketing and promoting their own product with better offers.
HDFC Securities was the No 3 player for a long time, it has now dropped down to No 5.
Outside the Top 5, Kotak Securities is facing tough competition from 5 Paisa.
The below table should give you a good idea on how Zerodha, Upstox, Angel and 5Paisa are growing much faster than the stock broking wing of established banks like ICICI, HDFC, Kotak and Axis.
| No | Broker | Feb 2020 | Jun 2020 | Sep 2020 |
| 1. | Zerodha | 12,57,180 | 17,46,614 | 23,03,799 |
| 2. | ICICI | 10,14,293 | 10,91,830 | 11,65,887 |
| 3. | Upstox | 5,55,302 | 7,29,858 | 10,11,117 |
| 4. | Angel | 5,05,144 | 6,80,090 | 9,33,128 |
| 5. | HDFC | 6,75,448 | 7,29,868 | 7,86,415 |
| 6. | Kotak | 5,38,909 | 6,04,820 | 6,75,620 |
| 7. | 5Paisa | 3,80,693 | 5,34,655 | 6,31,514 |
| 8. | Sharekhan | 5,20,546 | 5,52,897 | 5,87,121 |
| 9. | Motilal | 3,50,068 | 3,96,575 | 4,38,536 |
| 10. | Axis | 2,71,881 | 2,83,378 | 3,18,849 |
It’s interesting that Zerodha has nearly doubled its client-base in 6-7 months. It has added more than 10 lakh customers after the lockdown was announced.
In comparison, ICICI has added just 1.5 lakh customers during the same period.
Upstox has added nearly 5 lakhs customers, while Angel and 5 Paisa have also done very well.
Does the future belong to discount brokers? That’s the big question as technology and smartphones have disrupted the industry in a big way.
Which broker do you use? Tell us by posting a comment below.
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