You don't do want you want, you do what customers want: Groww Co-founder Lalit Keshre

Discount broking platform Groww saw its active user base reportedly crossing one crore in May, ahead of its closest rival Zerodha. At YourStory's Techsparks 2024, Co-founder Lalit Keshre revealed the reason behind its large user base.

According to Keshre, the startup's philosophy has always been building its products for its customers.

"You don't do what you want, you do what customers want. So broadly our mission statement was to make financial services simple, transparent and delightful. And then we we did research, and we started out with mutual fund distributions. Then customers asked for stocks and we launched stocks. And so on and so forth. So this is how like, our product journey has been," he said during a fireside chat with YourStory Founder and CEO Shradha Sharma.

Founded by Keshre, Harsh Jain, Neeraj Singh, and Ishan Bansal, Groww is a subsidiary of NextBillion Technology. It simplifies the investment process by helping users identify the best mutual funds for their portfolios.

"When we started the business, we did not think about this business like anybody else. The way we thought about it is, like, what can we do for the customer? So we did not build around mutual fund or stocks or NBFC. And we spend like, hundreds of hours and hundreds of days, just figuring out what customers want," Keshre said."I spoke to thousands of people before starting up to validate my concept on the ground."

Keshre, who has been building consumer products for the past 20 years, also spoke about his entrepreneurial journey.

About building Groww with his co-founders, he said, "We quit [Flipkart] in 2016 but we launched in May 2017 which is like exactly one year later. So finding the direction is a lot more important than running fast in the initial days when you're kind of trying to figure out what to do, but when once you find direction, then you can kind of run fast."