Nithin Kamath, Zerodha founder, used to earn Rs 8000, now his company's profit is Rs 2094 crore; know about his journey

Zerodha is one of the biggest online brokerage companies in the country. The company was started by Nithin Kamath with his brother and his five others. In the financial year 2022, the company's gross profit was a whopping Rs 2,094 crore. The company's revenue also increased to Rs 4964 crore. Currently, he earns in crores every month but there was a time when he used to work at a call centre at a paltry salary of Rs 8000 per month. Here's Zerodha founder Nithin Kamath's inspirational story. 

Zerodha is a part of India's unicorn boom. It is indeed a unicorn but with a difference -- the company is completely bootstrapped and massively profitable. 

Kamath had started stocks trading at a tender age of 17. He had been working at a call centre at the time. He worked at the call centre between 2001 and 2005.

He once met an NRI in a gym. He asked him what he did for a living? He showed his account. Impressed, the man gave Kamath his account for management. He was his first client. After this, Kamath left his job. 

Nithin worked for as many as 12 brokerage firms. Then he felt that stock brokers hadn't changed with the changing times. He saw an opportunity and opened an online brokerage firm called Zerodha. At the time, the National Stock Exchange was also providing its members free software. His brother Nikhil Kamath and five other people helped him open the firm. 

The first 1000 customers came after a year. However, an Economic Times article mentioning his company helped his brand in 2011. His account numbers jumped from 100 per month to 400 per month.

He also tried to raise funds in 2009. But they didn't trust his company and him as he was not from a business background. His educational background also didn't inspire confidence in them. However, he doesn't rue the fact now that he didn't get the desired funding because he now runs a profitable company.

Zerodha's business model revolves around the principles of low margin and high volume. Since the number of users is massive on Zerodha, even small transaction costs translate into massive business for the firm. The company takes zero charges for equity delivery investments, Rs 20 for intraday, equity, commodity, F&O trades or 0.03 percent, whichever is less.

Why doesn't he hire from IITs, IIMs?

Even though the entire corporate world wants to hire workers with IIT or IIM backgrounds, Kamath hasn't hired a single person from these institutions. In a recent podcast, he said he found it tough to fit such people within Zerodha. He claimed people from these institutions want to grow themselves and their careers instead of the organisation. He said at Zerodha, "we can't tell people how quickly they can grow".

He said if such people are open to doing something different for the business, he would hire them. 

He said people in the start-up ecosystem also want to grow fast and at any cost. He said he doesn't think anything can happen quickly in life.