Priyanka Tiwari
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The primary discount brokerages in India also absorbed notable losses amid the fall in stock market prices in March 2025. The underlying reasons for the phenomena seem to be a general market correction resulting from many exogenous factors aimed at controlling or stabilizing trading activity on the market.
Analysis and Overview of Major Discount Brokerages
Reporting collected by the National Stock Exchange (NSE) suggests that all brokerage firms cumulatively lost about 9.62 lakh active clients in Q4 from a total of 5.02 crore clients in the previous quarter, translating to a total of 4.92 crore clients across all brokerages. Exceeding this decline, four discount brokers, specifically Groww, Zerodha, Angel one, and Upstox accounted for approximately 80% of this decline.
Groww: Was impacted most severely, losing active clients down to 1.29 crore, a reduction of 2.37 lakh.
Zerodha: Suffered a loss of 2.31 lakh clients down to a total of 78.89 lakh.
Angel One: Clients declined by 1.76 lakh clients to settle at 75.78 lakh clients by the end of the quarter.
Upstox: Active clients decreased by 1.39 lakh clients to total27.47 lakh.
5Paisa capital, Paytm Money, Sharekhan, and Kotak Securities alongside many other discount brokerages also suffered similar dips.
Reasons For The Decline
The reduction in clients seems to coincide with a significant dip in the performance of local equities around October 2024. Alongside this, the IP offers a lackluster IPO market. Analysts have attempted to explain the drop by citing a few reasons.
Sluggish corporate profits and a weakening economy.
Tight liquidity and slow government spending.
Inflation is continuously getting worse.
Geopolitical uncertainties, alongside tensions.
Further, actions taken by SEBI to reduce aggressive trading in derivatives markets have restricted trading activity and broker income. Other restrictions include increasing the minimum contract size and limiting trade options. This led to a drop of more than 70% in daily volume of index options traded from November to January.
In benchmark Indices, showing the dip in the NTN market.
During Q4, India’s broad market indices, Sensex and Nifty, saw a decrease of 0.9% and 0.5% respectively. Mid caps and small market caps saw a sharper slump in comparison, registering a drop of 10.6% and 15% respectively on the BSE.
Emerging Brokerages Show Resilience
In sharp contrast to other brokerages, HDFC Securities are now reporting growth in active clients.
Moneylicious Securities, more locally known as Dhan app, boasted an increase of over 39,000 clients, bringing the total to an impressive 9.72 lakh.
PhonePe's Share.Market: Noted an increase of active users by 33,435 making a total of 3.55 lakh.
TradeSmart, Nu Investors Technologies, Market Pulse Securities, Bajaj Finserv, Univest Stock Broking, Choice Equity Broking, Yes Securities and others also noted an increase in the number of active clients.
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