When we were starting Zerodha, we didn’t have any money to spend on advertising or customer acquisition. So the only real growth lever we had was word of mouth. We had to build products and services that people liked enough to tell their friends and family about.

Very early on, people who traded with us started referring Zerodha to their friends, colleagues, and family. As a way of saying thank you, we started our referral program.

The idea was simple: if you referred someone to Zerodha, we would share 10% of the brokerage generated by that referral with you, for as long as they traded with us. No ifs and buts. No hidden conditions.

And it worked.

Until we had to stop the referral program in 2024 due to exchange regulations, close to 30% of our accounts were coming through referrals. But even this understated the true impact of word of mouth.

Most people don’t log in to a referral portal or share a referral link. They simply tell a friend, colleague, or family member: “You should open an account with Zerodha. I use it and like it.”

Those people then come directly to our website and open an account. So while the attributed referral number was around 30%, the real number was probably well north of 50%.

Even after we stopped offering referral incentives, about 15–20% of new accounts continued to come from referrals. That, for us, has always been the biggest validation.

We now have regulatory clarity and have restarted referrals. We are also reinstating referral benefits for all old clients who had referred people earlier.

This means that anyone who has ever referred clients to Zerodha will get 10% of the brokerage generated by those referrals for as long as they trade with us.

You can visit http://zerodha.com/refer and tell your friends and family about Zerodha.

Given that we don’t charge for investing in stocks, ETFs, bonds, and direct mutual funds, and given that AMC is free or nearly zero for most customers under BSDA, there’s no reason for you not to refer someone who wants to start saving and investing🙂

Along with Kite, Coin, Console, Varsity, Tradingqna, Tijori, Sensibull, Ditto, ZerodhaAMC, and the rest of the ecosystem we’ve built around investors and traders, we hope Zerodha remains a good place for your friends and family to begin their investing journey.

Read more here.

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