On the morning of November 12, Groww’s founders rang the bell at the National Stock Exchange to mark their public debut. It was a big leap for a startup to go public within just eight years of operations. Yet, inside the company, it was business as usual.
For co-founders Lalit Keshre (CEO), Harsh Jain (COO), Neeraj Singh (CTO) and Ishan Bansal (CFO), the initial public offer (IPO) was not a grand finale but simply another chapter in a story built on quiet discipline. “It was a beautiful moment,” recalls Jain.
“The IPO helped us immensely in terms of visibility. In many ways, it was a marketing event for us,” he says further. “Suddenly, a lot more people got to know about Groww. In fact, even on competitor platforms, investors were buying our shares.”
From the beginning, Groww resisted the temptation to chase vanity metrics. Instead, the founders kept their gaze fixed on customer needs, operating with transparency and trust. With the IPO behind them, Groww is widening its playbook—expanding into asset management business, margin trading facilities (MTF), commodities and wealth management.
The listing may have been the spotlight moment, but the real story is how Groww continues to scale in one of the world’s most competitive fintech arenas, proving that success can be achieved not through spectacle, but through steady, customer first execution.
“The journey doesn’t end at an IPO. There are so many more things lined up ahead,” Jain says.
In 2017, it had started business first as a mutual fund investment platform under the brand name Groww. It became a Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) stockbroker in 2020 and started its journey to challenge the industry and topple the leader, Zerodha, three years later.
Leap to Dalal street
With a market capitalisation of nearly ₹1 lakh crore, Groww is one of the most valued companies among listed peers in the capital markets sector. For context, Angel One’s market cap is around ₹20,000 crore while Motilal Oswal Financial Services is nearly ₹40,000 crore.
Shares of the Bengaluru-based company was listed at a 14 percent premium from its issue price of ₹100. The issue, which was open for sale from November 4-7 was oversubscribed 17.60 times. The company raised Rs 6632 crore through the IPO. It had raised ₹2,984.5 crore from 102 institutional investors through anchor subscriptions.
Prominent global investors in the anchor round included the Government of Singapore, Norway’s Government Pension Fund Global (GPFG), Abu Dhabi Investment Authority (ADIA) Monsoon, Goldman Sachs India Equity Portfolio, Wellington, Eastspring, Amundi, MIT Endowment, and New York State Teachers’ Retirement System (NYSTRS).
Jain says IPO has not changed life at Groww. The reason, he explains, lies in the way Groww was built from day one: On accountability. “We were always accountable to our customers. That meant whatever we do will be right for them, otherwise we won’t do it,” he says. That philosophy has shaped everything from strategic decisions to day to day product calls.
For the company, the IPO was a financial milestone in more ways than one. It offered existing investors an exit but also created a unique opportunity as customers themselves could become shareholders. “Our customers have become our shareholders now,” Jain adds. “That makes us even more relevant in their lives.”
Proceeds of the IPO money is earmarked for expenditure towards cloud infrastructure, brand-building, investment capital for MTF and NBFC businesses.
In February, Groww’s brokerage business added about 2.66 lakh active clients, implying nearly 75 percent of the total additions among discount brokerages. The active user base of rival Zerodha and Angel One increased by about 10,000 each during that month. In January, Groww had accumulated about 3.5 lakh active investors.
The Playbook
Billionbrains Garage Ventures, the parent of Groww, has rapidly become India’s largest direct to customer digital investment platform, measured by active users on the NSE. Its mission is straightforward yet ambitious: To make wealth creation accessible to everyone.
It offers a wide spectrum of financial products and services. Through its app and website, users can trade stocks, including IPOs, alongside derivatives, exchange traded funds (ETFs), digital gold, bonds and mutual funds, including its own Groww Mutual Fund. The platform also extends margin trading facilities (MTF), algorithmic trading, new fund offers (NFOs), and personal loans while equipping investors with tools, insights, and market data to shape their strategies.
What sets Groww apart is its design philosophy and technology backbone. With a user friendly interface and in house tech infrastructure, Groww is the only investment app in India to cross 100 million cumulative downloads as of June 30.
“The growth of its platform has been supported by customer growth, high engagement, and retention—which has translated into increasing total customer assets, customers using multiple products, and expanding annual average revenue per user (AARPU),” says Shivam Gupta, analyst, Anand Rathi, a stock market broker.
From the start of their journey on the platform through the end of FY2025, the total customer assets per user grew 5.36 times. Over the same period, the average annual revenue per user (AARPU) rose 1.86 times, underscoring the depth of engagement.
The breadth of adoption is equally telling: More than 53 percent of customers now use two or more products—ranging from mutual funds and stocks to derivatives, credit, and margin trading facilities (MTF).
Together, these numbers highlight Groww’s evolution from a simple investing app into a diversified financial ecosystem, where customers are not just trading but building long term wealth across multiple avenues.
Growth strategy
For Groww, growth has always been about clarity of focus. “There are a few levers of growth that we operate at,” says Jain. “Our growth equation is very simple.”
The first lever is expansion of the platform itself: Bringing new customers into the capital markets. “We still focus a lot on increasing our market share and penetration across the country. The larger part of the growth will come from new people entering the industry and participating in capital markets,” Jain says. That means investing in education, awareness, access, and simplification, even offering advisory support for early stage investors.
The second lever is product innovation. “We keep launching more products to become relevant,” Jain says. “For example, we launched margin trading facilities and commodities last year. Each product brings growth because it drives adoption, penetration, and new customers.”
The third lever is engagement and retention. “You have to keep customers engaged and make the platform relevant for them so they stay with you,” Jain says. This is where Groww’s philosophy as a platform comes alive: Building not just transactions but long term relationships.
Together, these levers form the company’s blueprint: Acquire, innovate, and retain. It’s a simple equation, but one that has allowed Groww to scale into one of India’s most influential fintech platforms, while staying true to its founding principle—doing right by the customer.
For its next phase of growth, the company is widening its product suite, anchored on three principles: Customer demand, profitability potential, and a differentiated user experience. Recent launches reflect this strategy in action. MTF was introduced for seasoned investors, commodity derivatives opened new opportunities for advanced traders, and an API trading platform now supports automated strategies for tech savvy users. It also launched loans against securities (LAS) to provide liquidity options and bonds for portfolio diversification.
During October-December, its revenue from MTF grew 41 percent quarter-on-quarter (QoQ) to ₹75.7 crore from ₹53.5 crore in the previous quarter, with the MTF book scaling to ₹2,310 crore in same period. Its credit segment revenue jumped 8 percent year-on-year and 18 percent QoQ.
As the platform matures and its user base deepens, Groww’s focus is on continuous innovation. The company aims to increase wallet share and drive higher AARPU through stronger engagement and broader product adoption. In short, Groww is positioning itself not just as an entry point to investing, but as a full scale financial ecosystem designed to grow with its customers.
Where is the focus now?
Beyond its core investing platform, Groww’s focus area is on two ambitious verticals: Wealth management and asset management.
The wealth business took shape with the acquisition of Fisdom, now rebranded as W and being scaled aggressively. The timing is deliberate. As more of its customers become affluent, they are seeking premium services and products tailored to their evolving needs. At the same time, a broader market gap has emerged. Ultra HNIs are well served, and retail investors largely operate DIY, but the rising class of new HNIs, which are relatively affluent, still remain underserved. Groww’s proposition is to bridge this gap, offering advisory and wealth solutions that resonate with this segment.
“It’s a zero to one business for us,” says Harsh, underscoring the opportunity to build something entirely new.
The wealth management business (Fisdom) reported revenue of ₹28.7 crore in the December quarter and an EBITDA loss of ₹14.7 crore as the company continues to complete the integration and scale up this business.
The second is asset management. Groww had acquired Indiabulls Asset Management Company in 2023 to launch Groww AMC. The company sees this as a long term play.
“Asset management is a compounding business. You keep doing the right thing, launching the right products, managing them well, acquiring customers, and gradually it scales. That’s how asset management businesses across the world have grown,” says Jain.
AMC’s asset under management (AUM) has reached ₹4120 crore. State Street Investment Management (the fourth largest asset manager in the world) has invested around ₹580 crore for a 23 percent stake in Groww AMC, which strengthens the balance sheet of this segment to pursue the next phase of growth and expansion.
“Groww continues to report strong revenue growth, backed by rising user adoption of products as well as robust user activation. Its brokerage business is gaining market share across segments, with recent product launches, such as MTF and commodities, fuelling further growth. The rising number of affluent customers unlocks wealth management opportunities for the company, with the ongoing Fisdom integration giving a further boost,” says Prayesh Jain, analyst, Motilal Oswal Financial Services.
Bumps ahead
One of the road bumps for Groww is possibly higher securities transactions tax (STT) levied on derivatives from April 1. In the Union Budget for FY27, the government has announced an increase in STT on futures to 0.05 percent of the notional turnover from 0.02 percent, and STT on options to 0.15 percent of the premium turnover from 0.1 percent.
For Groww’s core business, equity derivatives contribute majorly to its revenue mix (53 percent in Q3FY26). In retail option premium average daily turnover, Groww’s market share had expanded to 18.1 percent in Q3FY26 from 12.2 percent in year-ago period. During the three-month period ending December, its derivatives revenue jumped 6 percent year-on-year (10 percent QoQ) to ₹670 crore.
However, Jain dismisses the concern stating that the hike in STT is unlikely to impact its business. The deeper challenge lies in the constant evolution of customer behaviour, as the company has scaled up and evolved itself as a wealth platform serving both retail investors and high-net-worth individuals. That expansion has brought with it a new complexity: Multiple customer personas, each with distinct expectations. “Retail customers demand accessibility and ease, while HNIs look for sophistication and tailored solutions. Balancing both is no longer about building one product—it’s about building many, simultaneously,” Jain says.
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