Paytm Money surpasses Zerodha with 6.6 million users

Vijay Shekhar Sharma-owned company, which completed two years of operations, said 70% of its user-base is first- time investors, with 60% from smaller towns and cities.

Zerodha, on the other hand, claims to have 3 million users, of which 65% are first-time investors.

Currently, Paytm Money sells ₹20 crore worth of direct mutual funds on its platform daily. It also sells product related to national pension scheme (NPS) and stocks.

"We are on a mission to democratise wealth services for millions of Indians that would play a key role in building Atmanirbahar Bharat. Over the last two years, we have enabled new users from small cities and towns to invest with confidence by providing innovative and personalized services. We strive to become the first step in the investment journey so that every user benefits from technology and financial inclusion" said Varun Sridhar, CEO, Paytm Money. Sridhar was appointed as CEO in July.

Bengaluru-based Zerodha, which recently ascribed itself a valuation of $1 billion, continues to be facilitating 5 million orders daily, according to the company. This accounts for almost 15% of India’s daily equity transaction volume.

Zerodha founder Nithin Kamath recently told Mint that it was aggressively acquiring new users, adding 250,000 new unique accounts every month.

In comparision, Paytm Money, a late entrant, started offering stock-broking service only in August in spite of procuring a licence from Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) in April, 2019.

Mint recently reported that Paytm Money expects to do a full-scale launch of its stock broking service in September and expects to hit 100,000 in daily trades within six months, touching 250,000 customers in the first year.

Currently, the platform claims that it has more than 2.5 lakh users, which have applied to register for the stockbroking service.

In 2019-20, Paytm Money also said it has registered a 100% increase in new monthly SIP registrations and a 143% increase in overall monthly investment volumes.

As Paytm Money dabbles with stockbroking, Zerodha, which has been in the space for nearly a decade, is looking to launch its ‘loan against securities’ product this month.

The retail stock brokerage, which received its non-banking finance company (NBFC) licence from Reserve Bank of India in 2018, has been working on launching this product for almost two years now.