Nithin Kamath on Zerodha tech glitches: Impossible to never have incidents

“We deeply regret the incidents that happened this year and needless to say, we strive and work round-the-clock to minimize the probability of such incidents. However, it is impossible for any technology-first business, especially ones that are time-sensitive and to have to cater to a large number of users, to never have incidents,” Kamath wrote in a blog post.

To minimize the impact of any potential issues, he said they have made significant architectural changes over the years.

“This is one of the reasons why any incidents that happen affect a small % of users. But, given the demographics of our customers, we tend to get disproportionately large social media attention and press coverage. The exchange data however indicates that we have the least complaints among the top brokers as a percentage of our active customers at the exchanges. All that said, minimizing the probability of any issues is always at the absolute top of our list of priorities,” the billionaire broker said.

In 2023 alone, Zerodha admitted to at least eight technical glitches with issues varying from those relating to login on the Kite app, display of orders and positions as well as order placements.

Kamath also gave an update on products that India’s second-largest stock broker has in the pipeline – Realtime Nudges, New portfolio visualisations, Instant fund withdrawals, Nudge Assist, and Trade from Option Chain.

During the year 2023, Zerodha also launched operations of its mutual fund business with Zerodha Nifty LargeMidcap 250 Index fund and Zerodha ELSS Nifty LargeMidcap 250 Index fund.The brokerage also quietly started lending operations in 2023 with its NBFC arm Zerodha Capital.

“We started Zerodha Capital, our NBFC business, in 2020 with the aim of helping our users build a strong credit profile and also give people access to lower interest rate loans that could perhaps help pay off costlier loans. However, Zerodha Capital has been in capacity-building mode until very recently. We only really started lending operations in 2023 and are currently at a book size of Rs 112 crore,” Kamath said.

Zerodha has expanded the list of securities eligible for pledging to avail of loan from Zerodha Capital to include 653 securities across stocks and mutual funds.

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