Groww’s Active Investor Base Climbs Over 1 Cr In May 2024; Zerodha Stays Second

Fintech giant Groww now boasts over 1.03 Cr (10 Mn) active investors on its trading platform as of May 2024, with closest rival Zerodha coming in second with 75 Lakh active investors, as per National Stock Exchange (NSE) data.

Groww gained nearly 4.33 Lakh investors in May, while Zerodha on-boarded around 1.14 Lakh users. Based on active investor data, Groww’s market share has likely crossed 27%, according to reports.

Operated by Nextbillion Technology Private Limited, Groww is a fintech super app that started as an investments tech platform. Over the past two years, it has added payments and lending to its product suite and is closely eyeing the insurance sector as well. 

Among other investment platforms, Angel One gained 1.84 Lakh users in May, taking its total count to 64.86 Lakh, while Upstox has an active user base of 25.91 lakh, and Vijay Shekhar Sharma’s Paytm Money had 7.86 lakh active users as of May 2024. 

Founded by Lalit Keshre, Harsh Jain, Ishan Bansal and Neeraj Singh in 2017, Groww overtook Zerodha in mid-2023 as the platform with the most active investors. However, Zerodha continues to rake in more revenue than Groww. 

Investors have to pay to open an account on Zerodha, whereas Groww offers free account opening like most other brokerage platforms. 

Zerodha’s net profit rose 37% to INR 2,908.9 Cr in the financial year 2022-23 (FY23) from INR 2,120.3 Cr in FY22. Its operating revenue grew 37% to INR 6,832.8 Cr in FY23 from INR 4,977.3 Cr in the previous year.

Groww reported profits for the first time in FY23 as revenue from operations tripled to INR 1,227.8 Cr. The startup posted an FY23 net profit of INR 448.7 Cr against a net loss of INR 239 Cr in FY22. 

In late April, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) approved Groww’s bill payments platform Groww Pay Services to operate as a payment aggregator (PA). Also, the startup received an in-principle authorisation from the central bank for its PA business in January.

The fintech unicorn received Securities and Exchange Board of India’s (SEBI) nod to launch India’s first Nifty non-cyclical consumer index fund, and the new fund offering (NFO) went live in the first week of May.

Following that, Groww completed its reverse flip, shifting its domicile to India from the United States. The startup’s CEO and cofounder Lalit Keshre took to X to make the announcement.