Zerodha's co-founder and CEO on what it takes to build a world-class, credible, and socially responsible business that is focussed on sustainable growth, and why large businesses must be built without continuously raising funds to boost valuations at the cost of profitability
Nithin Kamath, a new-age entrepreneur, built a bootstrapped unicorn, Zerodha, which disrupted and redefined the business of stock broking in India. Interestingly, unlike startup peers, Zerodha has no deep-pocketed investors or big marketing spends. But it is one of the few profitable unicorns with around 12 million customers. In an exclusive conversation on Forbes India Pathbreakers, the co-founder and CEO says, “One of the ways to succeed in business is to sharpen your axe before you go chopping wood. Building a business is really hard but there is an illusion over the last four to five years that you can build a business quickly. Last five to seven years all businesses starting out have been cut-copy-paste models and the odds of building a resilient business that way is much lesser.” He talks about starting out, building the business and more.