At a time when everyone business owner and company is trying to achieve unicorn status, the success story of Nithin Kamath’s Zerodha, India’s largest brokerage house, will leave you inspired. Started in 2010 as a bootstrap company, Zerodha, in 2022, was valued at $2 billion (Rs 15,612 crores).
Nithin Kamath is running the company with his brother Nikhil Kamath and wife Seema Patil. From a five-member team to over 1300 employees, Zerodah has come a long way. As per MoneyControl, Zerodha is India’s first ‘discount brokerage’ firm.
In 2022, the company added a new feature of a consolidated family portfolio that allowed users to add up to 10 family portfolios and helped them with insights on sectoral exposures, asset allocation, and much more.
The remuneration that Nithin Kamath and his wife Seema Patil are taking home is huge. Let’s take a look:
In 2021, it was in the news that Zerodha founders would be paid Rs 100 crore each annually. According to Times Now, Zerodha’s board passed a special resolution clearing a basic monthly salary of Rs 4.7 crore and other allowances, bringing the total remuneration to Rs 300 crore every year. However, the news of them taking home such a massive paycheque received backlash on social media.
Nithin Kamath took to his Twitter to clarify that this was an enabling resolution that allows the three working promoters to draw salaries up to the number in case of liquidity requirements. “Running a business is like trading, you can be up or down very easily. It is important to take liquidity out when you are “up” to de-risk. We have always done this, ~15% of profits. This also helps us in supporting our personal investments in small businesses & social causes,” he wrote.
Giving insight on de-risking and salary he tweeted, “This de-risking is something that we are enabling for everyone on our team through our ESOP buyback. A portion of the profits allocated for the buyback every year. This year it is approximately Rs 200 Crores. Our PAT for FY 20/21 is approximately Rs 1000 crores( similar to bank brokers).” He further stated that the actual salary will be lower than the stated amount but higher compared to the norm.
The Hindu Business Line shared the salary breakup shared by Hindu Business Line – Nithin Kamath gets a basic salary of Rs 4.16 crore every month. Additional Rs 2 crore as house rent allowance, Rs 1.6 crore as other perquisites, and Rs 41 lakh as other allowances. That’s not all, he also gets a bonus amount and variable pay based on his performance and approval by the board and the norms and policies of the company. As per the report, both Seema and Nikhil take home the same amount.