When Groww made its stock market debut in November 2025, a few moments captured the imagination of India’s startup world quite like watching its CEO, Lalit Keshre, get there. For a founder who once thought getting 100 customers in a month would be ‘very good,’ the listing marked something extraordinary: Keshre, 44, currently holds 55.91 crore shares, representing a 9.06% stake in Groww. With the stock trading at a record Rs 169 a share, his holding is valued at Rs 9,448 crore, as per Moneycontrol.
Today, we delve deeper into the story of a farmer’s son from a small village in Madhya Pradesh who became a billionaire.
From Lepa to IIT Bombay
Keshre’s journey begins in Lepa in Madhya Pradesh, a remote village where access to an English-medium school didn’t exist. His parents made the difficult decision to send him to live with his grandparents in Khargone so he could attend the only English-medium school in the district. As per news reports, his father still lives in Lepa and continues to farm the same land.
The turning point came when Keshre heard, almost by chance, about the IIT entrance exam. He prepared, cracked the JEE, and entered IIT Bombay, where he earned both a bachelor’s and master’s degree in technology. For someone from a village where few even knew what IITs were, it was the shift that changed the arc of his life.
Engineering, a failed startup and Flipkart
After IIT, his career began in Bengaluru at Ittiam Systems in 2004, where he spent nearly seven years sharpening his product and engineering instincts. But in 2011, he took a leap into entrepreneurship and started Eduflix, an education-focused venture. It lasted two years; the business never scaled the way he hoped.
Keshre says little about those early failures, but news reports often suggest that Eduflix was the experience that shaped his risk appetite.
In 2013, he joined Flipkart at a time when the company was expanding aggressively. As one of its early product managers, he helped build core systems, including Flipkart Marketplace and speed-focused delivery initiatives that later became Flipkart Quick. The Flipkart years exposed him to the possibilities of India’s tech ecosystem, and also introduced him to three future co-founders: Harsh Jain, Ishan Bansal and Neeraj Singh.
The birth of Groww
In 2016, the four colleagues quit Flipkart and decided to build something that none of them had the vocabulary for at the time, a modern investment platform for ordinary Indians. Groww’s early days were humble. Even during the IPO ceremony this year, Keshre recalled, “We thought if we get 100 customers in one month, it’ll be very good. But we got 600.”
That early traction did not really come from marketing but from the product. A clean interface, no jargon, no intimidation, the company started with mutual funds and soon evolved into a full-stack platform for stocks, ETFs, US equities and eventually derivatives.
By mid-2025, Groww had 12.6 million active NSE clients, which was the largest base of retail investors for any platform in India.
The big break
Over the years, Groww attracted global investors from Peak XV Partners and Ribbit Capital to Y Combinator, Sequoia, ICONIQ and Tiger Global. In 2021, it became a unicorn. Later that year, Satya Nadella invested in the startup personally and even came on as an advisor, his first public personal investment in an Indian company. In FY25, the company recorded a revenue of Rs 39 billion and a net profit of Rs 18 billion, as per TechCrunch.
None of the founders sold shares. All four kept their stakes intact, with Keshre’s 9.06% stake alone placing him firmly in India’s billionaire club.
What his rise represents
Keshre’s story stands out in a startup ecosystem often dominated by metro-born founders with elite upbringings. He did not grow up surrounded by English, coaching classes, or the vocabulary of venture capital. He built Groww with the instinct of someone who understood how intimidating financial markets can feel to first-time users.
His success also reflects something larger happening in India: the democratisation of investing. Millions of young adults, many from small towns, entered equity markets for the first time on Groww’s app. Like many founders who come from outside India’s major cities, Keshre rarely seeks the spotlight. His public comments remain measured. He credits his team, focuses on product, and speaks sparingly. But his impact is undeniable.
Groww’s IPO may have made him a billionaire. But the journey that got him there is worth far more in understanding the shape of India’s next-generation entrepreneurship.
