Nithin Kamath

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Nithin Kamath

Nithin Kamath

@Nithin0dha

Founder & CEO @Zerodha @Rainmatterin Learning at @RainmatterOrg Musings on business & life: https://t.co/gQi9cu6E5h. Views are personal, Nothing is advice.

Bengaluru Katılım Ağustos 2013
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Nithin Kamath
Nithin Kamath@Nithin0dha·
Rainmatter started in 2016, with a few of us doubling up on our day jobs and trying to help startups that were trying to expand India’s capital markets ecosystem. Nine years later, it has grown into something far bigger than we ever imagined. So far, we’ve invested over ₹1,500 crore across 160+ startups spanning fintech, climate, health, media, and deep tech. We’ve also earmarked 10% of everything Zerodha earns to invest in startups, and another 10% for the social sector through the @RainmatterOrg. The thesis has evolved from just expanding the capital markets, but the thread running through it is simple. As a country, we need to own more of what we consume. Sovereignty, in the truest sense. We’re not a typical VC. We don’t take board seats, and we’re not in this for quick exits. We’re not interested in forcing founders into short-term decisions just so we can make money in five or six years. The simple reality is that building a good business is hard. Building one that is genuinely useful, scalable, and profitable is even harder when investors are pushing you to speedrun success and sustainability. That kind of pressure usually leads to shortcuts. And shortcuts, more often than not, come at the consumer’s expense. So our approach has been simple: be patient, back founders for the long term, and help them build the business the right way. That, more than anything else, is the heart of @Rainmatterin.
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Nithin Kamath
Nithin Kamath@Nithin0dha·
Dad’s favourite song. Missing him today. Recorded “Saranga teri yaad mein” and shared it with the team, and they insisted I put it up. Fair warning, I’m no singer. 😬
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Nithin Kamath
Nithin Kamath@Nithin0dha·
One thing that feels under-discussed in all the conversations about attracting foreign capital into India is the Indian diaspora. There is a large population of NRIs who are emotionally and financially interested in investing in India. But today, for many of them, the process of opening accounts, completing documentation, and actually investing in Indian markets is still far more painful than it needs to be. Making life easier for NRIs could be one of the lowest-hanging fruits for attracting long-term capital into India. This is something we’ve been focusing on heavily at @zerodha as well. Over the last year or so, we’ve made several changes to make investing as seamless as possible for NRIs. But there are still many frictions that exist because of regulatory and compliance requirements. Hopefully, SEBI and the government look at this more closely and think about how to make it easier for NRIs to bring money into India and participate in Indian markets. For a country trying to attract global capital, the Indian diaspora seems like the most obvious place to start.
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Nithin Kamath
Nithin Kamath@Nithin0dha·
The news about import duties on gold and silver going up to 15% came late last night. The interesting thing: neither open interest, prices, nor volume in Gold and Silver showed any unusual moves in the hours leading up to the announcement. If this had happened in the United States, I’m fairly sure some of the people close to the decision-making process would have found a way to trade it, either through regulated futures markets, other derivative contracts, or prediction markets like Polymarket and Kalshi. We’ve seen versions of this with crude. And during the Iran conflict, too, there were all these reports and allegations about people around the government trading through futures, contracts, and prediction markets before or around important announcements. It’s kind of insane how casually people in power seem to monetize privileged information. At some point, this stops looking like “market participation” and starts looking like blatant insider trading with better branding. Just another reason why Indian markets, despite all their flaws, are far more tightly controlled in these grey zones than many Western markets.
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Nithin Kamath
Nithin Kamath@Nithin0dha·
Leverage is pro-cyclical i.e., increase as the markets go up, which has been the case in the post-pandemic period. While leverage in F&O has steadily reduced because of regulatory tightening, some of it has migrated to margin trading facility (MTF). MTF's popularity is very recent and most retail customers don't really understand the risks. While we offer MTF, we do it without being loud about it or constantly pushing it. We are probably the only platform to warn users before they enable MTF.
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Nithin Kamath retweetledi
Karthik Rangappa 🇮🇳
Karthik Rangappa 🇮🇳@karthikrangappa·
This is one of the dream outcome from @ZerodhaVarsity Tribe initiative - to not just enable peer to peer learning but also bring students from rural and urban background on the same platform! So happy to see this happening!
Pavan Kumar.S@PavanKumar_HQ

Successfully conducted today’s peer engagement session with Mentor For Kids students. Grateful for the conversations, participation, energy, and perspectives everyone brought into the room today. Truly a meaningful experience. Big thanks to @karthikrangappa and @ZerodhaVarsity

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Nithin Kamath
Nithin Kamath@Nithin0dha·
1 week ago, @GalaxEye's Mission Drishti reached orbit, and we're proud to have played a small part in their journey through Rainmatter. When we first met them a few years ago, we were floored by their audacious goal. They were building the world’s first commercial OptoSAR satellite— it would combine optical imaging and radar sensors into a single payload that could see through clouds and operate day or night, no matter the weather conditions. It had never been done before. Their journey from @iitmadras to the @SpaceX launch on 3 May hasn't been easy. It took 4 years and countless obstacles along the way. It is rocket science after all! 😆 And building something as groundbreaking as Mission Drishti requires a team of founders with incredible grit and belief. This short clip captures the dream, the nerves, and the launch. Huge congratulations to @thesuyashsingh and the entire team at GalaxEye. We need more Indian startups to build for the world like this. Happy to have backed them in a small way through @Rainmatterin.
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Nithin Kamath
Nithin Kamath@Nithin0dha·
All health talk and all, but could not resist Kolkata's street-side, sweet Pan. 😬 @karthikrangappa caught me in the act. 😀
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sahu
sahu@cybersahu·
Introducing Dreamspan. We're building towards 150 years of healthspan. Enabled by adaptive health technologies.
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Nithin Kamath
Nithin Kamath@Nithin0dha·
When it comes to personal finance, people somehow keep making the same mistakes over and over again. There’s very little creativity in the mistakes people make. Take investing. Pretty much every influencer, every serious finance writer, and the financial media have been screaming for years: don’t mix insurance with investments. ULIPs are usually a bad idea. Endowment policies are usually a bad idea. And yet, ULIP sales continue to grow and endowment plans continue to be sold. People continue to fall for the same pitches, despite all the articles, videos, and excel sheets explaining why these products are bad. The same applies to health insurance, though I have a little more sympathy there. Health insurance is genuinely complicated. There are tiny clauses, room rent caps, waiting periods, exclusions, and conditions that most people don’t fully understand and then they find out the hard way, when they still have to pay out of pocket despite having a policy. But with products like ULIPs and endowment plans, there’s no excuse. These are not impossibly complicated products. Even a cursory Google search will tell you the problem. And today, in 2026, you can just ask ChatGPT or Claude whether a product is a good idea, and they’ll usually show you the math, explain the catches, and give you pointers on what to do. And yet, people still keep falling for the same thing. @PrateekLearnapp from @Zero1ByZerodha has made a really nice video on some of the biggest mistakes Indians make with investing and health insurance. It’s worth watching, and sharing with your friends and family too.
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Nithin Kamath
Nithin Kamath@Nithin0dha·
Since 2020, cash market activity hasn't grown much relative to options. At the same time, MTF (Margin Trade Funding) activity has significantly increased. MTF as we know it today, began around 2019 and started growing after 2022. MTF is mostly on NSE, and the growth in options activity over the last 3 years is mostly due to BSE (options started on BSE in 2023). Our MTF numbers have also grown significantly during the period; our total MTF book size is approximately ₹7,400 crores today.
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Nithin Kamath
Nithin Kamath@Nithin0dha·
Individual investors apparently sold ₹13,000 crores of direct equities from December 2025 to March 2026. Our clients were net buyers to a similar tune. Btw, all the retail participation has been through mutual funds. Direct retail ownership has been pretty much flat to declining.
Nithin Kamath tweet media
Nithin Kamath@Nithin0dha

If you look at listed brokers, you’d probably think we are in a bull market, but the data shows something else. In fact, there are a lot of conflicting signals. Cash market turnover is still below where it peaked in late 2024. Net direct equity inflows, for example, are negative for the first time since FY19. So where is there so much enthusiasm around capital markets related investment themes? Could be the strong equity mutual fund flows and SIP flows. Gross SIP flows are at a record ~32,000 crores. But the major brokers offer direct mutual funds, so they don’t make anything, including us. Speculative activity has held up despite everything. The MTF book across the industry has grown significantly. Our own book has grown from 0 to ~7000 crores in about 1.5 years. Brokerage income as a ratio of client float for most listed brokers is around 40% or above. With us, it’s sub 9%. That means clients are trading far more with these platforms relative to the funds they hold there. Could be all triggers and nudges to trade? Our own philosophy has always been to not push or induce customers to trade. In trading, for most people, fewer trades are always better. That means leaving a lot of revenue on the table. Whether that’s the right call, time will tell. So is it a bull market? The answer is it depends on where you are looking.

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Nithin Kamath
Nithin Kamath@Nithin0dha·
If you look at listed brokers, you’d probably think we are in a bull market, but the data shows something else. In fact, there are a lot of conflicting signals. Cash market turnover is still below where it peaked in late 2024. Net direct equity inflows, for example, are negative for the first time since FY19. So where is there so much enthusiasm around capital markets related investment themes? Could be the strong equity mutual fund flows and SIP flows. Gross SIP flows are at a record ~32,000 crores. But the major brokers offer direct mutual funds, so they don’t make anything, including us. Speculative activity has held up despite everything. The MTF book across the industry has grown significantly. Our own book has grown from 0 to ~7000 crores in about 1.5 years. Brokerage income as a ratio of client float for most listed brokers is around 40% or above. With us, it’s sub 9%. That means clients are trading far more with these platforms relative to the funds they hold there. Could be all triggers and nudges to trade? Our own philosophy has always been to not push or induce customers to trade. In trading, for most people, fewer trades are always better. That means leaving a lot of revenue on the table. Whether that’s the right call, time will tell. So is it a bull market? The answer is it depends on where you are looking.
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Nithin Kamath
Nithin Kamath@Nithin0dha·
We've got loads of problems to solve, but we also need to appreciate how far we've gotten in less than 80 years of independence.
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Nithin Kamath
Nithin Kamath@Nithin0dha·
A bunch of us travelled to Kolkata with our families and visited the Victoria Memorial and the Indian Museum. My first proper museum trip in Kolkata, and it’s easily the best museum city in India. The Victoria Memorial, conceived by Lord Curzon after the death of Queen Victoria in 1901 and opened in 1921, is stunning as architecture. But seeing it in India feels a bit off. Built with Indian money and marble from Rajasthan, it’s also a reminder of the scale of extraction during British rule. The Indian Museum is something else altogether. The range of archaeology, fossils, art, and anthropology is incredible. You can spend hours and still not be done. Sharing this because we don’t really have a strong museum-going culture in India. Maybe the long stretch of British rule has something to do with it. But if there are two museums to start with, these are a must-visit.
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Nithin Kamath
Nithin Kamath@Nithin0dha·
This is how we want our customers to feel — like they're "in good hands". From this essay by @kepano.
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Nithin Kamath
Nithin Kamath@Nithin0dha·
Who are the people who continue to "buy the dip"? Where's all this money coming from?😬
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Nithin Kamath
Nithin Kamath@Nithin0dha·
We enabled participation in auction markets in 2023, and someone told me a few small prop brokers who were making money on auctions were apparently hit pretty hard because liquidity improved and spreads tightened. All of this with just ~25,000 of our 1.7Cr+ clients participating in auctions in the past year. Auctions are held to procure shares when a seller fails to deliver shares and a trade results in short delivery. In auctions, shares are typically purchased at a significant premium to the last traded price due to illiquidity. We are probably the only major broker that allows retail investors to participate in these auctions, and participation is steadily picking up pace. By the way, if you have a stock that's eligible for auction, you can sell it at a premium and make an almost risk-free profit. The auction window opens at ~2:30 PM for 30 minutes. Eligible stocks show up under Bids → Auctions on Kite.
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