'Nikhil Kamath is a much better trader...': Zerodha founders on how they managed to build without VCs

livemint.com:

Well known online stock broking platform Zerodha was built partly due to the keen trading skills of Nikhil Kamath. During a recent podcast, his brother Nithin Kamath said that the company was ‘not meant to become what it is today’.  “I quickly realised that Nikhil is a better trader than I am because at that point of time we were trading money and I was also doing this side hustle of broking business. In 2008-09, I said if he is better at trading than me then why not he continue trading and maybe I can go to broking permanently," Nithin Kamath said recently during the ‘WTF is Health’ podcast.

At the time of its inception the duo had found the possibility of their massive success a somewhat unlikely process. “I remember sending the first e-mail I sent saying that if we arrive at 10,000 customers, we have arrived in life… now we are at 1.1 crore customers," he recalled. Earlier too, Kamath had lauded his brother's trading skills, noting in a LinkedIn post that Nikhil's trading profits from the first two years were the reason why they could build the company without VCs.

"Nikhil Kamath is a much better trader than me. When we started, the idea was he would trade and I attempt to build Zerodha. If it didn't work, I'd get back to trading.