NSE filings put Groww at almost twice Zerodha’s active-client base—and expose a threefold derivatives gap

National Stock Exchange member disclosures put Groww’s latest active-client count at 13,311,929, compared with 6,719,531 for Zerodha. Groww therefore had 1.981 times Zerodha’s disclosed active base—6,592,398 more clients and only 1.9 per cent short of an exact two-to-one relationship. The comparison is drawn from the exchange’s own member pages, not app downloads, company marketing or a third-party ranking.[1][2]

The same records reveal a different hierarchy when derivatives are isolated. Upstox reported 495,648 derivative unique client codes against 1,837,360 active clients, while ICICI Securities reported 175,002 against 2,145,263. The resulting disclosed ratios are about 27.0 per cent and 8.2 per cent respectively—a 3.31-times gap. The figures suggest materially different customer mixes, but the numerator and denominator cover different reporting concepts and should not be called exact derivatives participation rates.[3][4]

The exchange defines “active” more broadly than a monthly trading user

NSE describes an active client as one who traded at least once during the previous year. That definition captures a customer who made one transaction and a customer who trades every day. It is therefore a measure of reach within a 12-month window, not engagement frequency, revenue contribution or assets held. Comparing active counts is still useful, provided it is not translated into monthly active users or profitable accounts.[1][2][3][4]

Groww’s preceding disclosed active count was 12,804,934. The latest figure was 3.96 per cent higher. Zerodha moved the other way, from 6,819,638 to 6,719,531, a decline of 1.47 per cent. Upstox fell from 1,969,775 to 1,837,360, down 6.72 per cent. ICICI Securities rose from 2,072,245 to 2,145,263, an increase of 3.52 per cent.[1][2][3][4]

Those changes are not customer acquisition or churn rates. The one-year active window rolls forward: a person enters when they trade and leaves after a sufficiently long period without another transaction. A rising count can reflect new customers, reactivated customers or better retention. A falling count can reflect inactivity rather than account closure. The member pages do not decompose the movement.[1][2][3][4]

Groww’s lead is real, but size alone does not identify the business model

Within this four-broker comparison, Groww accounted for more than half of the combined active clients. That statement is not a national market share because the denominator excludes many NSE members. It does show how far the newer mass-market platform has scaled relative to three prominent competitors represented in the same disclosure system.[1][2][3][4]

Groww also reported 12,383,085 cash-market unique client codes and 2,904,458 derivative codes. Zerodha reported 6,309,083 cash codes and 1,577,907 derivative codes. Upstox reported 1,655,027 and 495,648; ICICI Securities 2,117,804 and 175,002. Cash codes were close to the active count at all four firms, while derivative codes differed much more sharply.[1][2][3][4]

The cash and derivative counts cannot be added. The same customer can trade in both segments and will appear in both columns. Doing so would double-count multi-segment users. Nor should the derivative count be divided by the cash count and described as a definitive conversion funnel without confirming the exact observation windows and whether every active customer was eligible for both products.[1][2][3][4]

Using the active-client denominator as a common scale nevertheless produces an informative descriptive ratio: 21.8 per cent for Groww, 23.5 per cent for Zerodha, 27.0 per cent for Upstox and 8.2 per cent for ICICI Securities. The first three cluster within about five percentage points; the bank-linked broker is substantially lower. That pattern is consistent with different propositions, demographics or risk appetites, but the public data do not establish the cause.[1][2][3][4]

The gap may reflect distribution, not merely customer preference

A derivative account requires product activation, suitability or risk acknowledgements, margin arrangements and a customer willing to use leveraged or time-sensitive instruments. Broker design can affect each step. Prominence in the app, education, pricing, account-opening friction, risk controls and marketing all influence how many customers reach the derivatives segment. The NSE counts show the outcome, not which mechanism produced it.[1][2][3][4]

ICICI Securities has a different distribution heritage from app-first discount brokers, including a relationship with a large banking group and customers who may use the platform primarily for investing. Upstox, Zerodha and Groww also differ in age, pricing, product presentation and acquisition channels. These are plausible explanations for the ratio gap, not findings proved by the member pages. Causation requires customer-level or company disclosure that the NSE data do not provide.[1][2][3][4]

The exchange pages also publish net-worth figures, but dividing those by active clients would create a misleading capital-per-user league table. Regulatory net worth, group funding, retained earnings and balance-sheet structure are not standardised measures of customer protection or operational capacity across these firms. The investigation therefore leaves those numbers out of the ranking rather than forcing an invalid comparison.[1][2][3][4]

What the filings establish—and what they leave open

The strongest conclusion is two-dimensional. Groww’s disclosed active base was almost twice Zerodha’s and had increased from the preceding observation, while Zerodha and Upstox declined. At the same time, the derivative-code intensity of the four businesses differed sharply, with Upstox’s descriptive ratio more than three times ICICI Securities’.[1][2][3][4]

For investors and regulators, the next useful disclosures would be active customers by month, trading frequency, derivative activation, customer losses, revenue per segment, dormant accounts and the overlap among cash and derivative users. Those data would show whether scale is broad but light, smaller but highly engaged, or concentrated in leveraged activity. The current member pages cannot answer those questions, but they reveal where to ask them.[1][2][3][4]

Within the four-firm comparison, scale was highly concentrated

The four disclosed active-client counts sum to 24,014,083. Groww represented 55.4 per cent of that limited total, Zerodha 28.0 per cent, ICICI Securities 8.9 per cent and Upstox 7.7 per cent. The calculation is useful for showing the internal shape of the comparison, but it is not an NSE-wide market share because hundreds of other members are outside the denominator.[1][2][3][4]

The distinction is more than a technical disclaimer. A market-share statement requires a complete and consistently dated universe. Four-firm concentration answers a narrower question: among these prominent brokers, how much of the disclosed active base sat at the largest platform? The answer—more than half—helps explain why small percentage changes at Groww move millions of customer observations.[1][2][3][4]

Cash-market proximity does not make the segment counts interchangeable

Cash-market unique client codes were equivalent to about 93.0 per cent of Groww’s active count, 93.9 per cent at Zerodha, 90.1 per cent at Upstox and 98.7 per cent at ICICI Securities. Those high ratios show that cash activity was widespread in each disclosed base. They do not prove that every remaining active customer traded only derivatives or another segment, because the observation windows and overlap rules are not fully reproduced on the member pages.[1][2][3][4]

The cash and derivative columns also measure unique client codes within each segment, not trades. A customer placing one derivatives order and another placing thousands can each contribute one code. The ratios are therefore about reach into a product category, not risk, volume or revenue intensity.[1][2][3][4]

A rolling one-year window can change rankings without account closures

Because the active measure looks backward over a year, its movement has a built-in lag. A customer who stopped trading eleven months ago can remain active today and disappear next month without closing an account. Conversely, a dormant account returns immediately to the measure after one new trade. Broker rankings can therefore move through reactivation and ageing-out even when headline account-opening numbers tell a different story.[1][2][3][4]

This makes direct comparison with company-reported registered users, demat accounts or monthly transacting customers hazardous. Each denominator answers a different commercial question. The exchange definition is valuable precisely because it is common across members, but only within the limits of that definition.[1][2][3][4]

The derivative gap is a lead for customer-outcome reporting

Upstox’s 27.0 per cent descriptive derivative ratio and ICICI Securities’ 8.2 per cent ratio identify a difference that the current disclosure cannot evaluate. Higher derivatives reach could reflect experienced active traders, product design, pricing or aggressive distribution. It could also create greater exposure to leveraged losses. Without customer profit-and-loss, position size, options-versus-futures detail and repeat-trading data, none of those explanations can be selected as the cause.[3][4]

A useful regulatory extension would publish segment participation alongside outcome measures: how many unique customers traded derivatives, how often, what proportion lost after fees, and how results varied by experience or income. The NSE pages already establish the denominator at broker level. Adding outcomes would turn a product-mix comparison into a consumer-risk comparison.[1][2][3][4]

The exchange pages create a reproducible benchmark

Because the four figures come from the same exchange directory, the comparison can be repeated when the pages update. A future refresh should preserve the observation date, prior value and segment counts rather than overwrite them with a new ranking. That would turn a snapshot into a time series and show whether Groww’s near-two-to-one lead and the derivative-intensity gap are persistent or temporary.[1][2][3][4]

The investigation is therefore not a claim that one broker is better than another. It is a correction to a one-number ranking. Groww leads on the exchange’s one-year active definition. Derivatives use tells a different story. A broker’s size and the kind of activity occurring inside that size are separate facts, and the NSE disclosures allow both to be measured.[1][2][3][4]

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