Nithin Kamath warns that Zerodha may be forced to charge brokerage fees to millions of users: here’s the reason

Zerodha’s founder and CEO Nithin Kamath warned that a continuation of the ongoing stock market winds could force its brokerage home, which has a long pioneer for its millions of users, may begin to charge fees. In a recent blog, Nithin Kamath said Zerodha had a significant 40 percent drop in its brokerage income in the June quarter of the FY26, which blamed the recent regulatory changes affecting active options trading. He said that the options business could have a further risk, with the regulators assessing whether the weekly options would stop for good. “If that happened, we would be forced to charge brokers for stock delivery trading to make the business feasible. Most of our competitors are already asking for delivery trading,” Kamath said in Die Post, with 15 years of Zerodha. Zerodha has maintained zero brokerage fees for its users for many years due to its large customer base. Kamath said the situation is not in the firm’s control. ‘In any case, most of these are not really under our control. How much we earn is dependent on market cycles, regulations and other factors. ‘ The risk crystallized in the long blog post, and Zerodha CEO noted that “there is always a risk that regulators are questioning the utility of options turnover”. “This risk has now crystallized with the increase in STT on options and reducing decaying to two weekly contracts for options,” Nithin Kamath said. “Along with these changes, the increase in the BSDA (Basic Services Dematria) -limit, removing the exchange transaction shortages and a general decline in market activity, our income and profits last year, as we expected,” he added. Kamath noted that the impact of these changes was felt during Q2FY25, with Zerodha eventually struck in the FY26 term in June. “The impact of all these changes started to hit us from October 2024, and the numbers do not fully reflect in the financial year 2024/25. This year we see a significant hit of about 40% in brokerage income in the latest quarter (June 2025) compared to the same quarter last year,” Kamath said.