From Jaipur Apartment to India's Largest Retail Broker
In 2016, four ex-Flipkart engineers — Lalit Keshre, Harsh Jain, Neeraj Singh, and Ishan Bansal — set out to make stock market investing as simple as online shopping. They built Groww in a Jaipur apartment, raised seed money, and spent five years obsessing over one thing: the first-time investor experience.
The bet paid off spectacularly. By 2024, Groww had become India's largest retail broker by total registered users with 50 million+ accounts — overtaking Zerodha in total client numbers. More than half of Groww's users are from Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities. More than 60% had never invested in equities before opening a Groww account. This is the company's real achievement: not winning existing investors from competitors, but bringing an entirely new class of Indians into the stock market.
The Business — How Groww Makes Money
Groww's revenue model mirrors the discount broking industry: ₹0 on equity delivery, ₹20 flat on F&O and intraday. But the company has steadily added revenue layers that differentiate it from a pure broker:
- Brokerage income: F&O and intraday trading fees — the largest revenue source, estimated at 55-60% of total revenue
- Distribution fees: Mutual fund distribution income from its 10 million+ mutual fund SIP users
- Interest income: On client cash balances and margin funding
- Groww AMC: Launched its own asset management company in 2023, managing index funds — recurring AUM-based fees
- Credit products: Margin trading facility and early-stage consumer lending pilots
The company crossed profitability in FY24 — a significant milestone that changes the IPO conversation entirely. A loss-making broker going public is a hard sell; a profitable one with 50M users and a clean balance sheet is a much easier story.
The IPO — Timeline, Valuation, and What to Expect
Groww has not filed a DRHP as of early 2026, but the IPO signals are clear. The company completed an internal restructuring — moving its holding entity from the US to India in 2023, a near-mandatory step for a domestic listing. Multiple reports indicate it is working with investment banks on an IPO structure targeting a 2026 or early 2027 listing.
The valuation question is the most contested. Groww was last valued at $3B in its Series F round (March 2021). Since then, the global funding environment has compressed fintech multiples significantly. However, Groww's path to profitability, its 50M user base, and the strong India equity market backdrop support a valuation in the $3B–$5B range at IPO — potentially higher if public market sentiment toward Indian fintech remains strong.
The Risks Investors Must Understand
1. Revenue Cyclicality
Like all discount brokers, Groww's revenue is correlated with F&O trading volumes. SEBI's October 2024 reforms — reducing weekly options expiries and increasing contract sizes — have directly impacted trading activity across the industry. A sustained low-volatility or bear market environment would compress revenue significantly.
2. First-Timer Retention is Unproven at Scale
Groww's unique advantage is also its biggest uncertainty: do first-time investors stay? The cohorts that joined during the 2020-2021 bull run have now experienced a full market cycle. Churn data from this group will be critical to understanding Groww's true long-term user economics. If first-timers leave when markets turn choppy, the 50M user number means less than it appears.
3. Zerodha and Dhan in F&O
In the high-value F&O segment — which drives the majority of broking revenue — Zerodha's platform is genuinely superior for experienced traders. Dhan (Raise Financial) has emerged as a sharp F&O-focused competitor. Groww's UX advantage is in the simple, SIP, and beginner segment. It must keep winning there while also upgrading its tools for users who graduate to more complex products.
4. Groww AMC is Early Stage
The AMC business is strategically important but commercially nascent. Building AUM takes years. The AMC will not be a meaningful revenue contributor at the time of IPO, meaning public market investors need to take it on faith as a long-term optionality rather than a near-term revenue driver.
The Bottom Line
Groww's IPO will be one of the most watched listings in Indian fintech history. The company has built something genuinely remarkable: 50 million Indians investing, many for the first time, through a product that actually worked for them. The founder team is credible, the market is large, and the profitability inflection makes the public market story coherent.
The key question for IPO investors: Is a profitable broker with 50M users but ~₹300-500Cr in net profit worth $3-5B? At a 60-100x PAT multiple, the answer depends entirely on how fast profitability scales as the user base matures and F&O trading deepens. If even 10% of Groww's 50M users become active F&O traders over five years, the revenue profile changes dramatically.
We'd watch the DRHP closely when it comes — the retention cohort data and AMC AUM trajectory will be the two most important numbers in the filing.