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Financial services platform Groww has applied for a ‘corporate agent’ licence, which allowed the company to partner with only three insurance companies per category, from the Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India (IRDAI), according to the people in the know.
The firm had applied for the licence a few months ago, the sources added.
This comes at a time when discount broker Groww has nudged past Zerodha to become the country’s largest broker in terms of number of active investors.
Groww had 66.28 lakh active investors at the end of September, with a 19.9 per cent market share. Zerodha had 64.79 lakh investors, with a 19.4 per cent market share in the same period. Groww added 3.93 lakh clients in September versus 1.21 lakh clients added by Zerodha.
In August, Groww had 62 lakh active users on its platform as compared with 63 lakh for Zerodha.
Despite rising competition from newer entrants like Paytm Money, Upstox, blinkX, Dhan, and HDFC Sky, the discount broking space in India is largely concentrated in the hands of a few strong players.
Groww has been ramping up its monetisation efforts by expanding its offering beyond investments. It has forayed into new areas like lending, payments, mutual funds and others.
Investment platform Groww’s Nextbillion Technology saw net operating income jump from ₹357 crore in FY22 to ₹1,294 crore in FY23, according to news report. Nextbillion’s profit after tax increased by about 10 times to ₹73 crore. Profit before tax stood at ₹97.7 crore.
The unicorn is trying to reduce its overdependence on trading. It has incorporated Groww Asset Management for mutual funds, Groww CreditServ for lending and Groww Pay for digital payments, becoming a larger financial services provider. Data from these entities is not available.
- Also read: Groww introduces UPI with ‘Pay’ feature
Recently, it had received approval from the market regulator Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) to launch its first index fund. The company will launch the Groww Nifty Total Markets Index Fund through a new fund offering (NFO).
Founded in 2017 by Lalit Keshre, Harsh Jain, Neeraj Singh and Ishan Bansal, Groww offers new ways for stockbroking, equity-linked savings, SIPs, IPOs, ETFs, and direct mutual funds.
The company has raised a total funding of $393 million over eight rounds, according to data by Tracxn.
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