Most accounts of Lalit Keshre, who recently rung the bell to mark Groww’s blockbuster debut on the bourses, describe him as the antithesis of the flamboyant tech founder. In an ecosystem often defined by loud valuations and exuberant founders, Keshre remains conspicuously modest and focused on the basics.
Keshre frequently cites a specific interaction with his grandfather during his childhood in Lepa village, Madhya Pradesh, as a defining moment in his character development. In second or third grade, after achieving the first rank in his class, he ran to his grandfather expecting applause and praise. His grandfather simply said, “Good”. That single word seems to have become the operating system for Keshre’s life: Success is not an occasion for hysteria; it is simply the expected output of a well-engineered system.
Groww listing propels Keshre into billionaire ranks
That same understated demeanour was on display this week as shares of Billionbrains Garage Ventures, Groww’s parent entity, surged post-listing, catapulting the 44-year-old into India’s billionaire club with a net worth estimated at over Rs 9,400 crore (over $1 billion). While the street cheered the Rs 1 lakh crore market cap, Keshre, characteristically, remains focused on the basics.
Long before the billion, Keshre was simply an engineer trying to solve his own problems. His first brush with entrepreneurship at IIT Bombay wasn’t a fintech play, but a medtech device—a portable allergen detector. Suffering from allergies himself, he built what he needed, establishing a “solve-your-own-problem” philosophy that would later define Groww.
But the path wasn’t linear. Keshre spent seven formative years at Ittiam Systems, a deep-tech firm in Bengaluru. In an industry chasing consumer clicks, he worked on the invisible plumbing of technology—video codecs and signal processing, used by the likes of Netflix and Google. This period instilled in him a rigorous appreciation for systems that work flawlessly under the hood, a contrast to the “move fast and break things” culture that defines many startups today.
In 2011, he left that stability to found Eduflix, envisioned as a “YouTube for education”. The product was solid, but the timing was fatal. In a pre-Jio India, data was too expensive to support a video-heavy platform. The startup folded, he returned the remaining capital to his investors. He walked away with a searing lesson on market readiness—infrastructure must precede adoption. Most founders view returning to employment as a regression; Keshre joined Flipkart as a product manager. Keshre often describes himself with disarming candour, claiming he isn’t particularly “good” at any one thing. His only true skill, he insists, is identifying the right people.
That thesis played out at Flipkart, where he met his future co-founders—Harsh Jain, Ishan Bansal, and Neeraj Singh. His recruitment strategy was simple but intimidating: He wanted each co-founder to be smarter than him, and the next hire to be smarter than the one before.
Groww’s early years built on community, not marketing
When this quartet left to start Groww in 2016, they didn’t launch with a splash. In fact, for the first few years, Groww spent almost nothing on marketing. The genesis of the company was rooted in community-led growth. They wrote blogs, answered queries on forums, and built educational content to demystify investing for the average Indian.
Keshre notes that Groww did not raise a significant institutional round for its first three years. The team survived on angel cheques, conserving capital with a discipline that bordered on frugality. This forced them into a product-led growth strategy: they couldn’t buy users, so they had to build a product useful enough that users would come on their own. It was a slow burn that built a high-trust brand before the hyper-scaling began.
Even now, at the helm of a public giant, Keshre is described by peers as quiet, shy, and understated. As he settles into his new role as the CEO of a public giant, the market will be watching to see if the understated architect can build a legacy that outlasts the noise.
