Nithin Kamath says women were just 2% on Zerodha in 2014. What changed to make it 30%?

A quiet revolution is reshaping India’s investing landscape. Women now make up over 30% of Zerodha’s customer base, a dramatic rise from just 2–3% a decade ago, according to co-founder Nithin Kamath.

Kamath, writing on X, said the surge prompted Zerodha to run a survey. “Around 50% of the women use their accounts on their own,” he noted. The other half rely on husbands, brothers, or children to manage their portfolios.

This shift isn’t isolated. It reflects a national trend: in 2014, women held just 21% of borrower accounts and had limited access to formal finance. By early 2025, they own 39.2% of bank accounts, with 42.2% in rural India, per the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MoSPI).

The turning point was 2014, when the Modi government launched the Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana (PMJDY). It sparked one of the largest financial inclusion drives in the world, opening over 540 million accounts—more than half now belonging to women.

Government data and the 2023 Inclusive Finance Report show the gender gap in account ownership has all but disappeared, falling from 17% in 2011 to nearly zero.

Zerodha’s internal numbers mirror this shift. What was once a male-dominated platform has seen a steady rise in female participation, especially in the last five years. Kamath said he was “surprised” by the scale of the change.