https://nithinkamath.me/Recent content on Nithin Kamath's personal homepageHugo -- gohugo.ioen-usTue, 23 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000https://nithinkamath.me/blog/will-india-grow-old-before-it-grows-rich/Mon, 13 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000https://nithinkamath.me/blog/will-india-grow-old-before-it-grows-rich/By 2039, every Indian state will fall below the replacement fertility rate, with Bihar being the last to cross this milestone. The evidence shows that fertility is tightly linked to income and education. Poorer and less educated populations tend to have more children and vice versa. The replacement fertility rate (usually 2.1) is the average number of children each woman needs to have to keep a population’s size the same over time, where new births perfectly cancel out deaths.https://nithinkamath.me/blog/keeping-mutual-fund-investing-direct-and-free/Thu, 09 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000https://nithinkamath.me/blog/keeping-mutual-fund-investing-direct-and-free/When we started the discount brokerage (flat fee per trade) model in India in 2010, we decided to charge the same fee regardless of trade size. The logic was simple: if the effort to execute a trade is the same, why should customers pay differently? We applied the same logic to mutual funds. We didn’t launch MFs until we could sell exclusively direct plans. You can’t call yourself a discount or a low-cost broker if you charge a percentage fee on transactions, because there’s no incremental effort in executing a larger order.https://nithinkamath.me/blog/intermission-by-the-ken-story-of-airtel/Fri, 03 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000https://nithinkamath.me/blog/intermission-by-the-ken-story-of-airtel/It’s been almost 20 years since I got my Airtel connection, and I’ve easily paid them more than Rs. 25 lakh in that time. I can’t think of any other business that has made even close to this much money from me. Now the reason why I am saying this is I was watching the latest episode of the Intermission by The Ken. In case you haven’t checked it out, it’s a wonderful show on the history of some of the biggest businesses in India.https://nithinkamath.me/blog/why-a-nice-place-to-work-doesnt-just-happen/Fri, 03 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000https://nithinkamath.me/blog/why-a-nice-place-to-work-doesnt-just-happen/Yesterday, I was chatting with a relatively new member on the team about what makes Zerodha different, and what I do for a job. What struck me was that his understanding of what makes Zerodha different was superficial. He knew we don’t incite customers to trade, but not much beyond that. And this got me thinking: this probably isn’t just them and is likely true of more of our recent hires; and that’s an onboarding gap we need to fix.https://nithinkamath.me/blog/the-cost-of-betting-too-heavily-on-one-sector/Thu, 02 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000https://nithinkamath.me/blog/the-cost-of-betting-too-heavily-on-one-sector/For most people, buying a broad basket of stocks or ETFs is a better investment strategy than picking specific sectors and building concentrated stock portfolios. For example, over the last 5 years, the Nifty IT index fell by 8%, while TCS dropped by about 40%. By the way, we are working on a new Kite Nudge that will alert you when you are placing an order, if your exposure to a single sector exceeds X%https://nithinkamath.me/blog/the-core-philosophies-behind-zerodha/Wed, 01 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000https://nithinkamath.me/blog/the-core-philosophies-behind-zerodha/Whenever I’m at events or am meeting young entrepreneurs through Rainmatter, the one recurring question I get is what makes Zerodha what it is. We’d created this page to explain what makes us different.https://nithinkamath.me/blog/rupeeflo-making-nri-investing-easier-to-start/Tue, 30 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000https://nithinkamath.me/blog/rupeeflo-making-nri-investing-easier-to-start/Onboarding for NRIs has always been a pain. Right now, the FCNR deposit scheme is a total no-brainer: the RBI is bearing the currency hedging bill, allowing you to get local, FD-like rates while your money stays in dollars with zero rupee risk. But despite how good the scheme is, it doesn’t help if opening an account takes 60 days. By the time the paperwork clears, the window might have closed, or the NRI may have lost interest.https://nithinkamath.me/blog/zerodha-fund-house-launches-lifecycle-funds/Mon, 29 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000https://nithinkamath.me/blog/zerodha-fund-house-launches-lifecycle-funds/Good investing outcomes come from doing a few boring things well. For most people, investing boils down to a handful of things: Decide on the right asset allocation for your financial goal and time horizon. Stick to low-cost index funds or ETFs instead of trying to pick stocks. Invest regularly, come rain or shine. Increase the amount you invest as your income grows. Rebalance your portfolio periodically. Stay invested. That’s really it.https://nithinkamath.me/blog/bee-boxes-and-better-farm-yields/Sun, 28 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000https://nithinkamath.me/blog/bee-boxes-and-better-farm-yields/Akshayakalpa has 13 years of data showing that simply introducing bee boxes increases the average coconut yield per farm by 20%. It’s such a massive win-win that they’ve now integrated 7,500 bee boxes across all their farms. Shashi from Akshayakalpa recently brought over two bee boxes for my home to get us started with beekeeping. In this clip (full video in comments), he walks through how incredibly simple it is to set up a bee home, even in smaller or semi-urban spaces.https://nithinkamath.me/blog/adoption-problem-with-glp1-india/Fri, 26 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000https://nithinkamath.me/blog/adoption-problem-with-glp1-india/India is a weird market. With obesity rates shooting up, I’d have bet on the sales of generic GLP-1s exploding once their patents expired. They now cost about Rs 1,000–2,500 a month, and there’s growing evidence pointing to benefits well beyond weight loss, including cardiovascular, metabolic, and liver health. Yet, generic drugmakers are quietly cutting their sales targets by 25–30%. At Rs 1,000–2,500 a month, it’s cheaper than a gym membership.https://nithinkamath.me/blog/there-are-no-shortcuts-to-making-money/Wed, 24 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000https://nithinkamath.me/blog/there-are-no-shortcuts-to-making-money/I watched Pyramid Scheme on Prime last weekend. It brought back a lot of memories of what it feels like to be stuck in one when the scheme goes bust. When I started my career at ~18, I was trying to find ways to fund my trading account. For about two years, I got drawn into a multilevel marketing company that turned out to be a pyramid scheme. I don’t think I was deceived by the person who introduced me, but by the company itself.https://nithinkamath.me/using-sensibull-to-trade-options-more-sensibly/Tue, 23 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000https://nithinkamath.me/using-sensibull-to-trade-options-more-sensibly/Despite the hit that F&O volumes took after the regulatory changes, and despite markets largely going nowhere in the last ~2 years, activity on Sensibull has remained steady even though we don’t actively talk about it much. One other interesting insight from Abid is about who tends to do well. As obvious as it sounds, people with capital tend to trade differently from people trying to get rich with small amounts of money.https://nithinkamath.me/blog/two-years-of-markets-zerodha/Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000https://nithinkamath.me/blog/two-years-of-markets-zerodha/Two years ago today, we started a daily finance and economics podcast called The Daily Brief. The initial impulse was me telling the team that there wasn’t really a good Indian podcast on markets, finance, and economics that I wanted to listen to while travelling. The result was an experiment called The Daily Brief, launched as part of a larger initiative called Markets by Zerodha (very original name, I know).https://nithinkamath.me/blog/tax-gap-that-shapes-corporate-behavior/Sat, 20 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000https://nithinkamath.me/blog/tax-gap-that-shapes-corporate-behavior/NSE is a cash generation and distribution machine. In FY26 alone, NSE earned a profit of over ₹10,300 crore and paid out roughly ₹8,660 crore in dividends— a payout ratio of 84%. This will likely continue even after listing because NSE can’t do much with the excess profits. SEBI doesn’t allow exchanges to invest in other businesses, listed or private. So why aren’t there more businesses like this? It comes down to a tax arbitrage.https://nithinkamath.me/blog/personal-loans-remain-popular-despite-cheaper-las/Tue, 16 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000https://nithinkamath.me/blog/personal-loans-remain-popular-despite-cheaper-las/I wonder why Loan Against Securities (LAS) is so unpopular. The fact that people with investments still take personal loans at a much higher rate surprises me. Personal loans typically have interest rates of 5-10% higher than LAS.https://nithinkamath.me/blog/zerodha-referral-program-is-back/Mon, 15 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000https://nithinkamath.me/blog/zerodha-referral-program-is-back/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.https://nithinkamath.me/blog/indian-markets-are-safer-and-more-transparent-than-many-global-markets/Sat, 13 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000https://nithinkamath.me/blog/indian-markets-are-safer-and-more-transparent-than-many-global-markets/Sure, things can be better, but it’s crazy how transparent and safe the Indian markets are compared to the US, all thanks to SEBI and the exchanges. It’s not just Fidelity; even other big brokers seem to have ‘flipping’ restrictions in place.https://nithinkamath.me/blog/helping-women-take-charge-of-their-finances-with-in-her-interest/Wed, 10 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000https://nithinkamath.me/blog/helping-women-take-charge-of-their-finances-with-in-her-interest/One of the biggest changes after COVID has been the sharp rise in the number of women investors. Before COVID, women accounted for roughly 15–17% of all Zerodha accounts. Today, that number is over 30%. Across markets, that number is around 23%. That’s millions more women investing for the first time across! Of course, some of these accounts are still managed by the men in the family. However, it’s encouraging to see more women from all walks of life taking control of their finances.https://nithinkamath.me/blog/uneven-impact-of-heatwaves-in-india/Mon, 08 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000https://nithinkamath.me/blog/uneven-impact-of-heatwaves-in-india/India has been consistently warming up. Decade after decade, temperatures have been rising, and this is a one-way journey unless humanity makes a dramatic course correction. All the heatwave deaths that are in the news are the result of this relentless warming. You will see a lot of numbers floating around, especially the recent viral study that a single day of extreme heat causes roughly 3,400 excess deaths across India, and a five-day heatwave nearly 30,000.https://nithinkamath.me/blog/tijoris-tools-for-spotting-stock-risks/Fri, 05 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000https://nithinkamath.me/blog/tijoris-tools-for-spotting-stock-risks/Indian investors keep getting regular reminders that ignoring corporate governance can come back to bite them in spectacular fashion. A bad stock pick and poor position sizing can wipe out a big chunk of your portfolio. Avoiding the worst of the worst stocks is perhaps more important than choosing the best ones. Tijori has two useful features that can help you screen out terrible stocks. On Tijoristack, you can generate a Risk Probe Report that shows you all the risks, red flags, and vulnerabilities you should watch out for.