- Paytm Money, One97 Communications Ltd’s wealth management arm (owned by Paytm), claims to have reached a customer base of 6.6 million users
Paytm Money, One97 Communications Ltd’s wealth management arm (owned by Paytm), claims to have reached a customer base of 6.6 million users, overtaking Zerodha, one of the country’s largest retail brokerage firms, by amount.
Vijay Shekhar Sharma-owned company, which completed two years of operations, said 70 percent of its user base was first-time users, with 60 percent coming from smaller cities and towns.
On the other hand, Zerodha claims to have 3 million users, 65 percent of whom are first-time buyers.
Paytm Money currently sells some 20 crores of direct mutual funds on its regular website. It also offers a national pension scheme (NPS) and stock-related goods.
“We are on a mission to democratize 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.
According to the company, Bengaluru-based Zerodha, which recently claimed an estimate of $1 billion, continues to facilitate 5 million orders a day. This represents nearly 15 percent of the volume of daily equity transactions in India.
Founder of Zerodha, Nithin Kamath, recently told Mint it actively acquired new users, adding 250,000 new unique accounts per month.
In comparison, late entrant Paytm Money only began offering stock-broking service in August despite obtaining a Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) license in April 2019.
Paytm Money expects to do a full-scale launch of its stockbroking 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.
For nearly two years now, the retail stock brokerage, which obtained its non-banking finance company (NBFC) license from the Reserve Bank of India in 2018, has been working to launch this product.
