Zerodha

For Indian markets, use brokers like Zerodha.

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.

So, Zerodha actually has a Kite MCP. So, your agent can actually view your portfolio, give you suggestions on it, and do all of that.

Zerodha removed that frequency completely. Said no RMs. No one going to anyone's house. We will play the mobile game.

The Claude Mythos announcement a few weeks back, about how AI can now autonomously find zero-day vulnerabilities at a scale and cost that wasn't possible before, is scary. It changed the cyber risk thought process for everyone, including early-stage startups that usually push insurance to later. We walked our Rainmatter by Zerodha portfolio through what's changed and offered to connect them to cyber insurers. If you're a startup or a fund and want to think through the same, happy to help.

I've known Karthik Rangappa 🇮🇳 for almost 30 years. My first interaction was me trying to sell him a Reliance Money demat account as a sub-broker. 😄 In 2014, he was teaching markets on the side while figuring out his next thing. I asked if he wanted to build a proper financial education platform at Zerodha. He said yes on the spot. That's how Zerodha Varsity started. 12 years, millions of readers. No paywall, no ads, no signups, no spam. He still personally replies to reader questions in the comments. In between, he built Varsity Live, Varsity Junior, Rupee Tales for kids, and more. And now he's turned Varsity's first module into a book, A Beginner's Guide to the Indian Stock Market. Bodybuilder, photographer, teacher, author, coder. What isn't he doing. 😄 Btw, we keep joking with him, is all this education obsession really just a 25-year project to fix his image with his father-in-law, who happens to be a legendary educator himself? 😄

I'll admit this might sound odd coming from me, maybe even clichéd. But it's something I've been sitting with for a while, so here goes. When I started out, like most people, I had a simple wealth goal. I'd actually written it down: hit ₹5 crore, retire in Goa, beach shack, done. That was the dream. After the Zerodha journey, I find myself on a very different side of that equation, and the dark inequalities of wealth and opportunity are harder to ignore than ever. We all know the numbers on inequality. The concentration of wealth among the top 1% is severe and getting worse, and it's even starker among the top 0.1%. The post-2008 era of rising asset prices has likely made this worse, because the people who hold financial assets are, by definition, people who already have money. This isn't unique to India. Barring a few exceptions, it's a global phenomenon. I'm cautious about attributing every socio-political problem we face today to inequality, but it's hard to deny the role it's played in the political upheavals we're seeing across the world. History rarely shows that sustained, extreme inequality ends well. To me, it increasingly feels like sitting in a car with the brakes cut, watching a cliff approach. Btw, all of this even before AI, which has a non-trivial probability of making things worse. I'll stop short of prescribing solutions. It's too easy to reach for simple answers to complicated problems, and that's a separate conversation entirely. But I think we need to collectively acknowledge this: wealth that just sits in financial assets whose value keeps compounding upward doesn't do much good for anyone beyond those who already have it. And if that wealth isn't in motion, if it isn't doing some social good, the fabric that holds us together will only continue to fray and lead to cynicism, resentment, and worse yet, nihilism. We're already seeing all of it. What I am saying is that even if a portion of that wealth were channelled into things that could materially improve lives, that seems worth doing. Hoarding wealth, in the grand scheme of things, doesn't really help anyone.

This is crazy. Btw, investing in stocks, ETFs, and direct mutual funds is free at Zerodha .

We've been thinking for a while about how to teach financial concepts to kids without it feeling like a lecture, and that's the whole idea behind Zerodha Varsity Junior. Along with this, we also recently allowed the ability to open minor accounts. Also, each video takes a real finance concept and explains it through a story that kids can relate to. The latest episode is about risk and reward. A farmer loses his entire watermelon crop. His son goes to deliver the last batch of mangoes to an old family friend, a pickle seller who's been buying from the same family for 24 years. And over some buttermilk and guava, he explains why some risks pay off, and some don't, using nothing more than his own experience with a chili pickle that nobody bought. It's not an easy concept to explain to kids but Karthik Rangappa 🇮🇳 has nailed it😉 Worth watching with your kids this weekend. Video link in comments.