Being born in a business family, children are expected to take the reins of the business and move it forward their way. Sometimes it is challenging for the younger generation to adapt to that notion or a matter of time to adjust. However, it becomes a bigger challenge when the unexpected happens and the decided path divulges. Amidst all, the business leanings remain the same. The story resonates with Kunal Shah – the brain behind FreeCharge, Paisaback and CRED, a venture capitalist, an entrepreneur and a true patriot of the technological revolution in India – whose Gujarati family business of pharmaceutical distribution in South Bombay tanked. 

However, the business and entrepreneurial ‘germ’ ran deep in 10-year-old Shah, who was given Rs 5 everyday for working in his father’s business and later depositing the money in a bank. At the tender age of 16, he saw his father’s business fail and a well-to-do family plunging into financial distress. The incident taught the 16-year-old about failures and instilled a sense of courage to gather motivation, refuel and restart.

Kunal Shah was bestowed with responsibilities at a very young age. Being the eldest child, he had to support his family and his education. By the time he was in high school, he had his hands dipped in part-time data-entry jobs besides side businesses like selling Compact Discs (CDs) and mehndi cones, teaching computer science to neighbourhood children, and running a cybercafé from his house. 

Contrary to the usual expectations of B.Tech followed by an MBA, Shah decided to pursue a Bachelor of Arts (BA) degree in Philosophy from the Wilson College in Mumbai. Was it a choice or a compulsion? 

Shah did not give importance to the degree choice at that time as his priorities were different. Philosophy was the only course that had the option of evening classes and suited the entrepreneur’s schedule. The timings allowed him to work part-time to help ease his family’s financial conditions. 

Having said that, the young chap graduated with flying colours and gained top scores. Though Kunal Shah was forced to choose this course, he actually enjoyed learning about the works of Socrates, Aristotle, Confucius, Immanuel Kant and John Rawls.

It’s interesting how everything in an entrepreneur’s life has some learnings or lessons. Being the only fintech founder with a non-engineering, non-tech background, Shah emphasised in many of his interviews how studying philosophy moulded him into a problem-solving entrepreneur who knows how to bring viable solutions to the table. 

Few years after graduation, Shah joined Mumbai-based Narsee Monjee Institute of Management Studies (NMIMS) to pursue a part-time Master’s in Business Administration. This time, the decision was a choice! A choice to plunge into a full-fledged entrepreneurial journey. Shah wanted to learn the intricacies of entrepreneurial strategies, consumer behaviour and functioning of the vast world of business on the sideline of his job as a junior programmer at a BPO. He clearly joined the course to learn and not to add a degree to his resumé.

It is sometimes funny how certain movies can have an ever-lasting impact on a person. One of them being 3 Idiots. Shah found himself connected to the lead character Phunsukh Wangdu, played by Aamir Khan. Both attended college not to gain a piece of paper but to enhance knowledge and understanding. Getting into the ‘character’, Shah dropped out of college within a few months of enrolment out of sheer frustration with the way business principles were being taught. He wears the ‘drop out’ tag proudly on his LinkedIn profile today. 

He, however, continued to follow up on one particular subject of his interest – consumer behaviour and marketing. Interestingly, he carried the ‘philosophy’ of – making a great product is not enough, marketing is the real deal –  and took the entrepreneurial plunge.

In the early 2000s, India was reaping the true benefits of the economic liberalisation of 1991. The markets were thrown open and the country was in the spotlight. The red carpet was laid out for companies to step into the world of trading with the Sensex reaching an all-time high. However, the dream was short-lived as the crash of 2008 brought the stock market to its knees. It was a bad time for investors and brokers – they had lost everything.

“In dreaded times, brave are the ones that will not lose hope, it’s what keeps us human”.

Around 2010, following the crash, it was the worst time to enter the market with the broking industry being at an all-time low. However, one company saw this “low” as an opportunity for disruption. The brother duo Nikhil and Nithin Kamath decided to create a complete online brokerage firm that would offer broking services at a discount, giving rise to – Zerodha.

A “Bull” Run

The word Zerodha means ‘zero barrier’ (number zero is coupled with ‘rodha,’ a Sanskrit word meaning barrier). In simple terms, Zerodha’s platform is an online retail and institutional broker dealing with commodities and currencies.

The company is currently valued at $1 billion and is one of the very few bootstrapped start-ups to achieve this feat. It stands at the top of the list with the highest number of active users to date. The company facilitates more than 5 million trades a day, accounting for nearly 15% of all such transactions in the country. Zerodha has grown by leaps and bounds over the years having face-offs with established brokers such as ICICI Securities and Kotak Securities.

Nithin, who serves as the Chief Executive Officer (CEO), presents Zerodha’s rise as a culmination of the ease of access to the millennial generation, which garnered the use of such apps on the basis of ‘free brokerage.’

Journey from $1 to $1 Billion

The founder duo come from a very different background. The older brother, Nithin, was an average student who discovered trading at the age of 17. He went on to pursue his Bachelors in Engineering from Bangalore Institute of Technology following which he picked up jobs at call centers before starting a franchise of Reliance Money where he worked as a sub-broker. On the other hand, Nikhil, a Mathematics genius and a chess pro, hated school. At the age of 17, the school dropout started selling phones and worked shifts at a call center.

The Kamath brothers had one thing in common: An appetite for savings. The duo saved a comfortable amount of money during their early days and started ‘Zerodha’ in 2010. And there was no going back. They had stints at multiple places in the field of stock trading and market analysis and hence were not alien to the “sophisticated” world of trading.

They churned out strategies that targeted the newer generation and it worked wonders.