Success Story Of Nikhil Kamath: From School Dropout To India’s Youngest Billionaire

In the new modern era, trading and investments are the two terms every young working professional wishes to experiment with. But due to several reasons like lack of knowledge, hefty commission and brokerage charges, uncertainties in the market and so on, people find it difficult to step into the share market. While many people are still reluctant to invest in stocks, Nikhil Kamath, at a very young age, started trading and later even launched Zerodha, largest discount broker in India. 

Let’s deep dive into the journey of Zerodha and its founders. 

Early Days Of Nikhil Kamath 

Nikhil Kamath was born in Karnataka and hailed from a middle class family. While his parents had a faith in him that he would prove to be an intelligent student in school life, Nikhil was not a studious child at all and didn’t even want to have a good academic career. As a result, he dropped out of his school when he was just 16 years old. But always keen on trading, Nikhil did not waste his time and started the business of selling old cell phones.

However, Nikhil’s idea of doing his own business at such a young age turned out to be a huge flop as his mother flushed all the phones down the toilet the moment she found out and eventually the business was shut down. At that time, Nikhil had only one thing in his mind that was to make money.

Therefore, he took up a job at a call centre and even started equity trading at the same time. Pretty soon, he was managing money for his boss, co-workers, and friends which helped him gain an  initial experience in asset management. 

The Launch Of Zerodha

After working in a call centre for almost three years, Nikhil decided to quit his  job. Soon after this, he received a cheque from a foreign HNI to manage his money, which he did along with landing a job at Reliance Money, where he served as a sub-broker. Fortunately, Nitin was one of the most successful sub-brokers, breaking volumes of more than 1000 sub-brokers at once in Reliance Money.

However, his happiness was short-lived as Kamath lost a considerable amount of money in the market crash during the global financial crisis of 2008-09. After this incident, Nikhil decided to launch a platform that would provide online stockbroking services to all the traders of the country, and would be easy to use. And that’s how he founded India’s first discount stockbroking company, Zerodha with his brother, Nitin Kamath, in 2010. 

Obstacles In The Road 

When Nikhil and Nitin first started, it was challenging for them to establish a company like Zerodha in the market. It was a slow start for the team because in India, when the cost of any product or service is less, people generically start questioning the quality. This was the biggest milestone for Zerodha founders to conquer.

In its first year, the platform opened 3000 accounts. Over the time, Zerodha used technology heavily to differentiate itself from the rest in the market and the company successfully became the biggest broking firm in the country.