Success Story of Groww – An Emerging FinTech Giant for Millennials

Gone are the days when investing in mutual funds or stock market was nothing but a headache for the people. In this digital era, all you need is a bank account, some disposable income, and a smartphone to begin investing and managing your shares.

The founders of the company, Lalit Keshre, Harsh Jain, Ishan Bansal, and Neeraj Singh, built this app for a sole purpose of providing right information and resources to the customers which they will be needing to get started with investing as quickly as possible.

There is no denying in the fact that the term “investing” in India was no short of a long, hectic and not-so-reliable procedure for the people. However, Groww’s founders changed that thinking and revolutionized the investment process by making it fast, easy and transparent.

Want to know how did they manage to do so? Read this blog and you will get your answer.

While it is not easy to establish yourself in the market full of top players, an out-of-the-box thinking could always put you in the right direction.

Having said that, let’s understand what kind of a platform Groww is.

About Groww

Groww is a Bangalore-based brokerage firm which offers online discount brokerage services for a single charge. In simple words, Groww is an online platform that can help you investing in stocks, IPOs, and mutual funds directly. Currently, the company is among the top leading investment platforms in the country.

How did it begin?

It all started in 2016, when the four Flipkart employees, Lalit Keshre, Harsh Jain, Ishan Bansal, and Neeraj Singh decided to quit their jobs to start a venture of their own. They wanted to launch a platform which could make the process of investing an easy and accessible thing for everyone.

During their tenure in Flipkart, the four partners were quick enough to find out that the e-commerce industry was going through a notable shift and investment in stocks or mutual funds will be the next big thing in India. While doing their due diligence about the market, the ex-Flipsters analysed that around 200 million people in the country are interested in investing, but only 20 million are active. Hence, by taking all the necessary factors into consideration, four of them came up with an idea of launching Groww in 2016.

Interestingly, within a year after its launch, the company became one of India’s top mutual fund investment platforms. Presently, there are over 1.5 crore users on the app spread across 900+ cities.

Founders & Team

Hailing from the Engineering background, Lalit Keshre, the co-founder and CEO of Groww gained a lot experience about the market during his stint at Flipkart, where he was in the Product department. On the other hand, Harsh Jain, COO and head of Growth and Business at Groww, was an IIT Delhi student. While Ishan Bansal, BITS alumnus, is serving as the CFO and head of Finance at Groww, Neeraj Singh, who is company’s CTO and head of product development and customer research, was graduated from ITM, Gwalior.

Growth in the market

Groww began as a direct mutual fund distribution platform and gradually expanded its portfolio by adding equities, digital gold, ETFs, intraday trading, and other investment options. It’s been just five years since the launch of Groww and the company has grabbed the attention of several investors across India.

If you take Groww’s revenue report into account, its earnings were increased by 4.7 times to a little over INR 1 crore in the financial year 2020, from INR 20.14 lakhs in FY19. The firm has seen a continuous growth in the last couple of years and achieved the unicorn status in April 2021 after raising worth $83 million in Series D funding round led by Tiger Global Management.

You would be surprised to know that more than 60% of Groww users come from smaller cities and towns of India

Reason behind the success of Groww

For a fintech company like Groww, the most important thing to keep in mind is to expand its customer base. In order to do so, Groww leverages technology to reach the proper target audience, which eventually lowers its operating costs. Also, when it comes to investment, people hardly think of switching between various apps. This means, once a user has started to using your app, he or she would likely to stick with you for a long haul.

Another significant reason behind Groww’s incredible success in such a short span of time is that it has a very simplified interface which makes the app easier for its users to comprehend the investment world.