Zerodha gets final approval to launch mutual fund, Vishal Jain to be CEO: Nithin Kamath

Online stock broker Zerodha on Friday announced that it has received the final approval from the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) to set up its own asset management company - Zerodha Fund House. Zerodha's co-founder and CEO, Nithin Kamath, made the announcement on Twitter, saying that the brokerage house will be setting up the asset management company in collaboration with Smallcase.

In his tweet, Nithin Kamath wrote, "We just received the final approval for the Zerodha AMC we are building in partnership with Smallcase."

We just received the final approval for the @ZerodhaAMC we are building in partnership with @smallcaseHQ.

Our motivation to start a mutual fund was twofold. The first was that the biggest challenge and opportunity for Indian markets is the shallow participation. Even after…

— Nithin Kamath (@Nithin0dha) August 11, 2023

Talking about the thought process behind establishing a mutual fund and asset management company, he said, "Our motivation to start a mutual fund was twofold. The first was that the biggest challenge and opportunity for Indian markets is the shallow participation. Even after all the growth over the last 3 years, we only have maybe 6-8 crore unique mutual fund and equity investors put together."

Talking about the second reason behind the move, he added, "The second was that if we had to bring in the next ten million investors, they needed simple products they could understand, and mutual funds were a perfect instrument."

Elaborating on the plan ahead, he informed, "We aim to be index-only and create simple funds and ETFs that all investors can understand and invest in for all their goals."

Alongwith this, he also named Vishal Jain as the CEO of Zerodha Fund House. The Zerodha co-founder stated that Jain has been a part of Zerodha's passive investing journey in India from day 1. And signed off saying, "So yeah, keep an eye out for our first NFO."