According to reports from The Economic Times, Nithin Kamath credited Karthik Rangappa as central to building Zerodha Varsity, the brokerage's free financial education platform. The two first met around 2005 when Kamath was attempting to sell him an international investing account. As reported by The Economic Times, Kamath said they hit it off instantly and Rangappa later helped build Zerodha's first website through a friend when the company was still operating under the name Kamath Associates. The partnership evolved from their shared passion for capital markets, with Rangappa joining in 2014 and single-handedly writing Varsity, which has since become one of the most-used capital markets education resources in the world. As Kamath recounted in a recent post on X, the journey from that first meeting to Varsity took nearly a decade, winding through France, a master's degree in finance, and a return to India.
As reported by The Economic Times, Kamath stressed that Varsity was not built primarily as a customer-acquisition tool for Zerodha. He said the company had never focused on determining how many of Varsity's millions of registered email users were Zerodha customers. According to the report, Kamath emphasized that discussions about how Zerodha benefits from Varsity have never been a part of their conversations over the years, with the platform covering topics including investing, markets and personal finance. The company has deliberately avoided treating Varsity's millions of registered email addresses as potential customers or marketing leads, with Kamath identifying this absence of commercial agenda as the secret behind Varsity's success. As he explained, when a financial education platform is genuinely not trying to sell something, people can sense it, and that trust has been built over thirteen years of free, agenda-free content.
According to The Economic Times, over the past three years, Rangappa had further expanded the platform's impact through text-based content, videos, live sessions and offline initiatives, with the help of the wider team. The platform has grown to become India's most comprehensive free financial education platform, covering investing, trading, markets and personal finance in a manner that is accessible to complete beginners and useful to experienced market participants simultaneously. It has become a reference point not just for retail investors but for anyone trying to understand how financial markets work. The platform has millions of registered users and has become a reference point not just for retail investors but for anyone trying to understand how financial markets work. The expansion demonstrates how Varsity has evolved from a simple educational tool to a comprehensive financial education platform serving millions of users worldwide.
As reported by multiple sources, Zerodha achieved its success through an unusual growth model, growing without significant advertising spend and without raising venture capital, a genuinely rare structure for a company at its scale. The company co-founded by Nithin Kamath and his brother Nikhil Kamath in 2010 introduced a flat fee of ₹20 per trade, regardless of order size, instead of the percentage-based fees traditional brokers charged. By 2020, Zerodha reported a self-assessed valuation of approximately $1 billion, with Forbes 2026 estimates now putting the company's value at close to $8 billion. The brothers own 100% of the privately-held firm between them, with Nithin serving as CEO and Nikhil as CFO. The story of how a failed sales call in 2005 eventually produced something that has genuinely improved financial literacy for millions of Indians represents what Kamath described as a better investment story than most of what Varsity itself teaches.
