When Jio Platforms’ IPO opened for subscription on October 21, Zerodha founder and CEO Nithin Kamath used the moment to reflect on the telecom company’s role in India’s digital economy. He said the expansion of affordable mobile internet, together with Aadhaar and UPI, helped create conditions for online businesses—including Zerodha—and a much larger retail-investor base.
In comments reported by Moneycontrol, Kamath compared roughly two crore unique investors in 2016 with more than 13 crore today. He credited Jio, along with Bharti Airtel, for bringing millions of people online with affordable data. The figures and explanation are Kamath’s account as reported by the publication; they are not a measure of Zerodha’s own customer count.
Why Kamath brought up Jio during its IPO
The Jio Platforms IPO became a focal point for discussion about the company’s impact beyond telecom. Kamath’s point was that businesses built on internet access do not grow in isolation: connectivity, digital identity and digital payments can make it easier for people to discover, access and use online services.
He described Jio and Airtel’s role in widening access to mobile data and said Aadhaar and UPI were also important to Zerodha’s own growth. That is a founder’s perspective on the ecosystem behind his company, rather than a claim that any one service alone created India’s investing boom.
How the digital rails connect to online investing
For a digital stockbroker, a customer needs a reliable way to get online, complete onboarding, move money and use trading or investing tools. Affordable mobile data can lower one access barrier. Digital identity and payments can make parts of the onboarding and transaction experience more convenient.
Those conditions can expand the audience available to online-first businesses, but they do not replace the work of building a useful product. Zerodha’s discount-broking model, technology, customer experience and the wider increase in market participation all form part of the business story. Kamath’s remarks put infrastructure alongside those company-level factors.
It is also important not to conflate national market participation with brokerage registrations, active accounts or investors who trade regularly. These are different measures. The “over 13 crore” figure cited in coverage describes the investor count Kamath referenced, not the number of Zerodha customers.
The Jio IPO and the market it helped connect
Jio Platforms’ ₹30,213-crore IPO closed on October 23. The Economic Times reported bids exceeding ₹4.5 lakh crore and more than 1.25 crore applications, figures compiled by Safal Capital. That record demand brought renewed attention to both Jio’s public-market debut and the broader digital economy that helped expand access to internet-based services.
In a striking connection, Kamath recalled that when Jio was preparing to launch, he had appeared on an Economic Times list of business people to watch. A decade later, his reflection linked the growth of an online brokerage to telecom and public digital infrastructure built by other organisations.
What this means for Zerodha
Zerodha is an Indian online brokerage founded by Nithin and Nikhil Kamath. Its low-cost, technology-led model was built for customers who wanted to access financial markets through digital products. As more people gain internet access and become comfortable with online payments, the potential reach of that kind of business can expand—though conversion into sustained, informed investing is not automatic.
For the company and the sector, the next challenge is not simply to bring more users online. It is to support informed participation, explain risk clearly and build services that work reliably for people with different levels of experience. Greater access can widen opportunity, but investing still carries the risk of loss.
Access is not the same as investment outcomes
Kamath’s comments are a reminder that successful technology businesses often depend on infrastructure beyond their own products. They are also a reason to separate access from results. More connectivity and easier digital onboarding can help people reach financial services, but neither ensures that an investment will perform well or that an investor will avoid losses.
For readers following the Jio IPO, the bid and application records describe demand for the offer—not future share performance. For readers following Zerodha, the more durable question is how the company and India’s financial ecosystem help new market participants make informed decisions as digital access grows.