Startup of the year: What Zerodha attempted to do when it started in 2010

Zerodha has used its technological prowess and a deep discounting model to disrupt the Indian brokerage industry in ways few had imagined

Zerodha is derived from the words “zero” and “rodha”, which means barrier in Sanskrit. Removing all barriers for traders is what Zerodha attempted to do when it started in 2010.

“Back then, the aim was to focus was on very active day traders, reduce the trading cost and bring in a lot of transparency to the business, because financial services firms are generally very opaque in the way they do business,” says founder and chief executive officer, Nithin Kamath, who used to manage a community of traders on social media platforms such as Orkut and Yahoo messenger and was a