Pods and product DNA: The culture behind Groww’s heady rise

For the longest time, entrepreneurs watched the Indian stockbroking space from afar, wondering if they should dive headlong into unfamiliar waters. Two things kept them at bay: the trading market didn’t seem deep enough and bootstrapped Zerodha had already grabbed the early opportunity and swum ahead.

Former Flipkart executives Harsh Jain, Lalit Keshre, Ishan Bansal and Neeraj Singh were among the few who decided to still take a chance. They believed that a simpler and intuitive online platform might draw a new generation of investors who had never actively traded shares or used wealth-management services. That’s how Groww was born in 2016.

Today, it figures among the largest direct mutual-fund distributors and stockbrokers in India. With backing from the likes of Sequoia Capital and Tiger Global, its valuation spiked 3X last year to hit $3 billion. It now plans to launch a neobank, a move that could cap a frenetic period of expansion for the six-year-old startup.