Decoding Groww’s unicorn run

When Groww launched its broking platform in July, it knew that to compete with the much older Zerodha and Upstox it needed to expand the market, which even now stands only slightly above 1% of the country’s population.

It had some experience in that. Earlier, as a primarily mutual funds platform founded in 2016, the startup took to social media not just as a part of its marketing efforts. Its founders spent disproportionate time on forums such as Quora and WhatsApp, engaging with members there on how to invest and manage their wealth. This helped them understand the market and user needs better.

In a Quora post from 2017, CEO Lalit Keshre, explaining investment concepts to a novice trader, lists options around direct stock trading and mutual funds, along with a short message at the bottom on how Groww could help. Even now, Keshre regularly interacts with more than 300 customers on WhatsApp to understand the challenges faced by daily traders. Groww is active also on Instagram and Telegram.

For its trading business, Groww kicked up its outreach a notch with TikTok-style short videos in Hindi featuring expert influencers and targeted at first-time traders. Several of these videos have gone viral, helping Groww double its Youtube subscriber base to 600,000 in four months.