Zerodha made $1B+ with no full-time product managers: 'Engineering efficiency is a moat, not a feature'
In a 2020 post, Zerodha CTO Kailash Nadh detailed how 30-member tech team, formed over seven years, built India's largest stockbroker
- Nov 24, 2025,
- Updated Nov 24, 2025 2:39 PM IST
Zerodha's lean engineering philosophy resurfaced in the tech debate after entrepreneur Dilip Kumar highlighted the brokerage's unusual team structure, noting that the company generated over a billion dollars in revenue without a traditional product management setup.
"Zerodha made $1B+ in revenues & $500m+ in profits without any full-time PM & ~30 engineers managing 16 million customers. Engineering efficiency is a moat, not a feature," he wrote on X.
The comment came in response to tech analyst Peter Yang's post on Cursor, which he said scaled to a $29 billion valuation without any full-time product managers. Yang described its workflow as the opposite of big-tech playbooks. He wrote that "PM (product manager) work is spread across designers and engineers. Everyone does what fits their strengths and uses AI to fill the gaps."
Yang said most design work begins directly in code rather than visual tools. "Ryo barely uses Figma except for initial exploration. Most features start as live Cursor prototypes because ‘it feels more real than pictures,’" he noted. He added that Cursor avoids long-term planning cycles: "No annual roadmap theater… Just a 'fuzzy direction' and features shipped to concentric circles (e.g., staff, nightly beta users, consumers, enterprises) to polish."
In a follow-up thread, Yang clarified that he was not dismissing the role of product managers. "PMs should encourage themselves and their team to wear multiple hats and build rapid customer feedback loops," he wrote, adding that "Everyone should obsess about the end user product… Get things in the hands of customers ASAP." He argued that long-range planning is unrealistic in fast-moving AI environments.
His takeaway: "I think there will be fewer PM roles, but the PMs who know what they're doing will still 10x the effectiveness of their teams."
Responding to Kumar's post, UniCourt co-founder and CTO Prashanth Shenoy said the absence of a formal title does not mean the absence of responsibilities. "No full-time PM? Engineering is listening to customer feedback directly and deciding what next to build? Someone is definitely playing the product role here." he commented.
Zerodha's minimal-structure model has long been part of its identity. In a 2020 post, Zerodha CTO Kailash Nadh detailed how the company scaled with a tight-knit team. "30-member tech team formed over seven years built India's largest stockbroker. Unconventional setup," he wrote. Nadh said the team had "two mobile developers, two designers, two frontend developers, one test engineer, one devops engineer, and one liaison," with the rest being full-stack developers.
"There are no dedicated project or product managers, and developers step up to these roles and natural leaders emerge," he said. Small, overlapping "micro teams" of two to four developers owned products end to end.
Zerodha's lean engineering philosophy resurfaced in the tech debate after entrepreneur Dilip Kumar highlighted the brokerage's unusual team structure, noting that the company generated over a billion dollars in revenue without a traditional product management setup.
"Zerodha made $1B+ in revenues & $500m+ in profits without any full-time PM & ~30 engineers managing 16 million customers. Engineering efficiency is a moat, not a feature," he wrote on X.
The comment came in response to tech analyst Peter Yang's post on Cursor, which he said scaled to a $29 billion valuation without any full-time product managers. Yang described its workflow as the opposite of big-tech playbooks. He wrote that "PM (product manager) work is spread across designers and engineers. Everyone does what fits their strengths and uses AI to fill the gaps."
Yang said most design work begins directly in code rather than visual tools. "Ryo barely uses Figma except for initial exploration. Most features start as live Cursor prototypes because ‘it feels more real than pictures,’" he noted. He added that Cursor avoids long-term planning cycles: "No annual roadmap theater… Just a 'fuzzy direction' and features shipped to concentric circles (e.g., staff, nightly beta users, consumers, enterprises) to polish."
In a follow-up thread, Yang clarified that he was not dismissing the role of product managers. "PMs should encourage themselves and their team to wear multiple hats and build rapid customer feedback loops," he wrote, adding that "Everyone should obsess about the end user product… Get things in the hands of customers ASAP." He argued that long-range planning is unrealistic in fast-moving AI environments.
His takeaway: "I think there will be fewer PM roles, but the PMs who know what they're doing will still 10x the effectiveness of their teams."
Responding to Kumar's post, UniCourt co-founder and CTO Prashanth Shenoy said the absence of a formal title does not mean the absence of responsibilities. "No full-time PM? Engineering is listening to customer feedback directly and deciding what next to build? Someone is definitely playing the product role here." he commented.
Zerodha's minimal-structure model has long been part of its identity. In a 2020 post, Zerodha CTO Kailash Nadh detailed how the company scaled with a tight-knit team. "30-member tech team formed over seven years built India's largest stockbroker. Unconventional setup," he wrote. Nadh said the team had "two mobile developers, two designers, two frontend developers, one test engineer, one devops engineer, and one liaison," with the rest being full-stack developers.
"There are no dedicated project or product managers, and developers step up to these roles and natural leaders emerge," he said. Small, overlapping "micro teams" of two to four developers owned products end to end.