Zerodha is seen as the quintessential example of a profitable company. Acclaimed for being bootstrapped from the start, company co-founder Nikhil Kamath told Business Today that in the initial years, he too was tempted to raise money. However, destiny had other plans.
“When we needed money, not many people were offering it,” he said, adding that when investors came knocking on the Kamath brothers’ door, eight years had already passed and they had already made a Had set up a profitable business, which was not needed. external money.
Nikhil Kamath launched the stock brokerage firm Zerodha in 2009 along with his brother Nitin Kamath. In 2019, Nikhil launched Trubeacon, a wealth management venture, in association with Richard Patel, former vice chairman of Standard Chartered Private Bank.
It is also important to note that the Kamath brothers have also invested in several start-ups through their investment and incubation entities – Rainmatter Climate and Rainmatter Fintech. Rainmatter has backed start-ups like CRED, Jupyter, The Whole Truth, Frappe, Jodo and a few more.
He also talked about the funding winter in the Indian start-up ecosystem where late stage funding has gone down drastically. He agrees that valuations are stabilizing and says, “People have become suspicious of valuations.” They don’t necessarily fix themselves on the path to profitability. Today the scenario has changed. The focus on profitability is very high, he confirms.
In addition to the fintech and climate space, Bhai is bullish on the proptech sector. And for this, Zerodha has partnered with Puzzolana, a construction equipment manufacturer, to work together in the real estate technology segment through its venture, Grihas.
Kamath revealed that Zerodha, which recently announced its participation in the Green Start-up Pledge (GSP), is also set to announce some climate-related initiatives in the coming times.
layoff debate
The layoffs happening within the tech industry have taken the world by storm. In the last few months, major tech giants like Meta, HP, Amazon, Google announced their decision to cut jobs. In the start-up space, Ola, Byju’s, Unacademy, Vedantu and many others also laid off their employees.
Sharing his views, Kamath said, Tech is making jobs redundant. He also said, “One thing technology is doing is making the need for more and more employees a little redundant and that trend will continue.” He also said, “Technology will continually evolve and make more jobs redundant.”
Kamath gave the example of Twitter where redundancy is being talked about in a similar way. He echoed Tesla boss Elon Musk who said the worst thing about Twitter is that it has about 10 people managing each person who codes. “It’s all the work of technology,” he notes.
Read also: ‘Grab the rose, but the thorns hurt’: Jobless Millennials despair over working with start-ups
Read also: ‘If I had Rs 100, I would invest in…’: Nikhil Kamath of Zerodha reveals his investment preference
