Zerodha enters unicorn club, without raising money from investors

Zerodha, one of the most popular stock broker companies based in India, has made up to the “Unicorn Club” as it valued itself for $1 million. This is interesting as, since the foundation, it hasn’t raised funding from any investors.

It has also made up to the Hurun Global Unicorn List of 2020, which values the startup at a whopping $3 billion. Zerodha has 108th rank in the global unicorn ranking and is the new entrant in the Hurun list and ranks.

Founded in 2010, CEO Nitin Kamath said that the company is planning to buy back shares given to its employees at a price that took the valuation of the online broking firm to ₹ 7,000 crores, nearly $1 billion. Nitin Kamath believes that the valuation is still conservative, as it had a strong revenue growth last year.

"Valuation etc really matter only if you intend to sell a portion of your company, otherwise it is just a vanity metric which doesn't really mean anything. That said it is good to know that someone values us as much," Kamath told in an interview. He also believes that the valuation would have been higher if they were valued as a technology firm.

Zerodha has been in the market for 10 years and is in completion with other popular platforms like Ratan Tata backed Upstox, and publicly-listed competitor ICICI Direct. Kamath said to stay the best in the industry, they are building more features to let users on the platform invest better.