With almost 7 million users, Zerodha has lagged behind Coinswitch Kuber with 11 million users and WazirX with an 8.5 million user base.
Zerodha was once the largest stockbroker in India. But the popular trend of crypto exchanges has left it behind. With only 5 million active users, the Zerodha trader’s count has gone down.
Presently, Coinswitch Kuber is the second largest crypto company in India. Its announcement of series C funding of $260 million worth alongside the US company Andreessen Horowitz has led to massive popularity.
Currently, it is tough to get the total count of India’s stock market investors. As per the details provided by the BSE, presently there are eight crore UCCs. Any individual can register and open accounts alongside many brokers.
The crypto market offers greater opportunities to investors. People use multiple accounts for different types of crypto exchanges. Investors might also want to shift to a different exchange due to liquidity and trust issues. These reasons add to the number of overlapping members in crypto exchanges. This case is not the same for stockbrokers.
In the current scenario, India has 1.5 crore investors in the crypto industry. By now it has gone far too high. The founder of Zerodha had tweeted on the 9th of September that the online newage brokers wouldn’t be disrupted by any other stock brokerage company. The disruptions are expected to arise from the side of the crypto exchange.
Crypto is still growing in India and a similar scenario existed in the US, 4-5 years ago. The fear around regulation is restricting the platforms from doing a full-fledged crypto exchange. If the issues around regulations continue then the broking industry might be disrupted and traders can simply walk away.
The Parliament budget session, February 2021 was supposed to introduce a bill to ban private cryptocurrencies. However, it was not introduced to the table and the legal position of cryptocurrency still remains unclear in India.
