₹94,000 Crore App That Just Posted a PAT Drop

The Fintech That Turned Chai-Time Stock Gossip Into a Business

Let’s talk about Groww — or as BSE insists on calling it, “Billionbrains Garage Ventures Limited,” a name that sounds like a Silicon Valley fever dream crossed with a South Delhi startup co-working space. The company was founded in 2017, spent a few years quietly convincing millennials that buying mutual funds shouldn’t require visiting a PSU bank branch and surrendering a blood sample, and has since grown into India’s largest digital investment platform by active NSE users as of June 2025.

26.27% market share on NSE active clients. 13.94 million active users as of March 2025, now reportedly heading higher. A platform that covers 98.36% of India’s pin codes, with 81% of its users outside the top six cities. Median user age: 31. In a country where the average financial advisor is 52 years old and still insists on physical application forms, Groww is playing a completely different game.

The company pulled off a ₹6,632 crore IPO in November 2025 and listed to much fanfare. Then Q3 FY26 arrived — PAT down 27.8% year-over-year — and suddenly everyone remembered that a high base effect from an unusual Q3 FY25 (where expenses were negative, implying a reversal/writeback situation creating a 104% OPM) makes comparisons look ugly. Meanwhile, State Street agreed to invest ₹580 crore in Groww AMC, giving the asset management arm its first institutional credibility seal. And the concall promised growth in commodities, MTF, wealth management, and the ever-popular “next few decades” of Indian capital market expansion.

There is a lot going on. Let’s sort through it with data, humour, and zero interest in repeating the brokerage research you already get for ₹0 on every Telegram channel.

They Built a Prettier Version of Your Old Broker. And Charged You Less. Then More.

Groww’s core business is securities broking — meaning they are the middleman between your ambition and your demat account. The model is simple: make it beautiful, make it free (or near-free), accumulate users by the crore, then find ways to monetise that giant pile of anxious investors. Stocks, derivatives, bonds, mutual funds, margin trading, and personal loans. If it’s a financial product and an Indian salaried person has heard of it, Groww wants a cut of it.

Broking is still the lion’s share — roughly 83% of Q1 FY26 revenue — driven by brokerage from equity, derivatives, and margin trade funding (MTF). The MTF book crossed ₹1,000 crore and management says they’re adding ₹600 crore every quarter like clockwork. Commodities, launched in September 2025, already contributed 4% to top-line revenue within a single quarter. That’s actual traction, not press-release traction.

The “others” bucket (17% of revenue) includes Groww AMC — which manages ₹21,397 crore AUM as of March 2025 — wealth management via the Fisdom acquisition, lending (personal loans + loan against securities), and insurance distribution. This is early-stage, subscale, and burning cash. But the addressable market is enormous, the distribution moat (27% NSE market share, 1.8+ crore transacting users) is real, and the customer acquisition cost for cross-selling to existing users is, per management, “almost zero.”

Q3 FY26: The Numbers (With Context So You Don’t Panic)

Result type: Quarterly Results  |  Q3 FY26 EPS: ₹0.89  |  Annualised EPS (Avg of Q1 ₹1.81 + Q2 ₹0.79 + Q3 ₹0.89 ÷ 3 × 4): ₹4.65  |  Note: EPS reclassified post-IPO (shares outstanding changed significantly)

What’s This App Worth? Let’s Do the Maths Grown-Ups Do.