After experiencing a slowdown in the addition of new demat accounts last year, online brokers are focusing on new segments in order to keep their customers engaged. They are currently focussing on asset and wealth management, distribution, loan against securities, and margin trading facility. And the results have been encouraging.
For example, in the December quarter, inflows into Groww’s mutual funds were 30% higher than last year, average daily retail cash turnover in stocks grew 20%, and retail derivatives premium ADTO grew 45% from last year, and MTF Book by 325%. It said in the shareholders letter that its scaled products stocks and equity derivatives grew 24% and 7% respectively, its contribution to total income fell to 72% this quarter compared to 81% in Q3 FY25.Angel One’s gross broking share to the company’s revenue also fell slightly from 65% in December quarter last year to 61% in that of FY26 interest income grew from 28% to 31% and distribution from 2 to 3%.
Beyond Broking
A Motilal Oswal report on Angel One said, “The new business of loan distribution witnessed strong growth during the quarter. Other new businesses, such as the distribution of fixed deposits, wealth management, and AMC, are likely to gain traction over the medium term and contribute towards the improvement of overall margins with scale.”
The year-on-year growth percentage of demat accounts almost halved to 16.5% in 2025 from an average of 32.9% in the last six years, according to depository data. They stood at 215.9 million as of December end.
Zerodha was an early mover into other segments. In 2023, Zerodha fund house partnered with Smallcase to build passive products. As of December quarter, Angel One MF’s average assets under management were worth Rs 438.57 crore, Zerodha MF Rs 9,606.16 crore, and Groww MF Rs 3,347.52 crore.
Ishan Bansal, Groww’s co-founder said in the company’s analyst call after December quarter results that in the last 12 to 18 months, market hasn’t been that great and hence, the new acquisition in the industry level has actually slowed down.
Cross-Sell Engine
He added that this was not a good time to actually invest more but to do more optimisations and focus more on cross-sell. The idea is to have customers having multiple products on the platform so that over a period of time you build a relationship with the customer and they become captive to you.
Amit Majumdar, Group Chief Strategy Officer, Angel One believes that this is more about solving for access. He said, “Digital platforms like ours first made market participation easy for new-to-market investors and once that access barrier came down, customers naturally began discovering and using adjacent products on the same platform.”
Typically, investors come in for one need, but as they see relevant offerings, engagement expands across products, he added.