Stock and mutual fund investment platform Upstox’s user base doubled from 5 million, six months ago and has crossed 10 million users, ahead of rival Zerodha’s 9 million users. It remains the second-biggest broker in India after Zerodha based on active clients.
About half of the users i.e., 5 million are active users, while Zerodha has an active user base of over 6.2 million. India had a total of 89.7 million active Demat accounts, as per reported data for FY22.
“Our mission is to magically simplify investing for every Indian. And with this milestone of 1 crore customers, we are just getting started in our mission,” said Ravi Kumar, Co-Founder & CEO, Upstox.
In September 2021, Upstox was eyeing 10 million users by the end of the fiscal year 2022. One of its founders Shrini Vishwanath said that the growth momentum would continue in FY23 as well.
In his words, “We have been growing at a rate of almost 3x year-on-year for the past three years. We do expect that to continue.”
In the next four to five years, the company is aiming to onboard 200-300 million customers. At this rate, Upstox expects to have a user base of anywhere between 25 and 30 million by the end of FY23. It wants to be a wealth management platform and will look at adding more products to allow its customers to manage all investments in one place.
“Our larger ambition is to be more than just a broker investor platform. We want to be a strong wealth management platform. We want to be in a position that whether it’s a savings account, credit card, fixed deposit, or a loan, we want them to come to Upstox,” Vishwanath said.
Financials
It reported a loss of Rs 71.67 crore in FY21, as compared to Zerodha’s profit of Rs 1,122 crore. Revenues rose 3x year-on-year to Rs 385.64 crore in the same year. Zerodha’s revenue during the same period was ₹2,729 crores.
Upstox is backed by Tiger Global and Ratan Tata. It was founded in 2009 as RKSV Securities by Ravi Kumar, Kavitha Subramanian and Shrini Viswanath. It entered retail broking in 2011 and was rebranded to Upstox in 2016. In November 2021, Upstox gathered a $24.7 million investment from Tiger Global as part of a larger round as per sources.
User Base
Over 50% of Upstox’s customers are millennials, nearly 70 per cent are first-time investors, and more than 85 per cent belong to Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities.
Ravi Kumar, the CEO of Upstox, said that one of the reasons for the growth base to increase is because they have kept the offerings simple and invested in a hassle-free experience.
Industry
The entire broking industry saw a huge influx of customers during the pandemic. As a result, there was a rally in the market and broking houses added new customers.
Comparison with other competitors
Groww, another investment platform, has 20 million customers, driven largely by its mutual fund investment user base.
Angel One, formerly Angel Broking, one of the early retail broking houses in India that were set up in 1996, has over 9.21 million users. Paytm Money has 0.85 million trading accounts and 9 million registered mutual fund investors.
