Why PM Modi picked Nikhil Kamath for his podcast debut

Among India’s richest self-made entrepreneurs and philanthropists who is also a popular podcaster, Nikhil Kamath has a new feather in his cap: interviewing Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who admittedly was nervous about how his podcast debut would be received. While Kamath has featured high-profile guests from industry on his show, his fans expressed shock and awe at him getting PM Modi to open up, and mustering his best albeit rusty Hindi to do so. But then, this is Kamath’s forte—rewriting the rules of the game. The dropout turned disruptor, the unflappable pragmatist who dismantled an entire edifice of traditional brokerage, has also managed to disrupt podcasting by engaging in a two-hour conversation with a three-time prime minister.

Zerodha, the company founded and run—and almost entirely owned—by Nikhil and Nithin Kamath, is valued at ₹64,800 crore and manages over ₹5.6 lakh crore in assets. The first successful online broker in India, the Bengaluru-based company revolutionised the industry with its flat-fee brokerage model—charging zero brokerage for equity delivery trades and a minimal fee for intraday and derivative trades. Just as India leapfrogged decades of developmental delay with the advent of the IT revolution, Zerodha exemplified the democratising power of technology. The platform didn’t merely offer cheaper trades; it offered a reimagination of what investing could be. The cumbersome phone calls to brokers, the opaque fee structures, the exclusionary air of financial markets—all of it was swept away in a flood of data dashboards, algorithmic tools, and low-cost democratisation.

The company reported ₹4,700 crore in annual profits for FY24. With over 8 million users and 16.4 per cent market share, Zerodha is the second largest online brokerage company in the country. Groww, another Bengaluru fintech unicorn that started out with a focus on mutual funds, overtook Zerodha in 2023 to become the largest. It has over 13 million users, or 26.6 per cent market share.

India’s demographic dividend has been a boon for these online brokerage firms. The younger, tech-savvy population has shown a growing inclination towards equity investments as traditional instruments like fixed deposits and savings accounts have lost their allure due to declining interest rates. Campaigns promoting financial literacy and the availability of free educational content by brokers (Zerodha’s Varsity, for instance) have empowered individuals to invest confidently. Social media platforms like Twitter, YouTube, and Instagram have popularised stock trading and personal finance, creating a wave of first-time investors. The profile of investors entering the market has therefore evolved, with millennials and Gen Z dominating new account openings.

With growing participation by rookies, however, the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) has tightened the rules for equity derivatives trading to safeguard investor interest. As a result, Zerodha and other brokers expect a big dip in revenues. They are launching other features to make up for this—Zerodha for instance has launched margin trading, allowing users to borrow money from the platform for trading. In a blog post, however, the company has advised against using MTF. “Leverage is like a weapon of mass destruction, and MTF is a leveraged product, so trade with caution,” reads the post. The company actively discourages over-leveraged trading, a practice that generates short-term profits for brokers but often leads to financial ruin for retail investors.

In fact, Zerodha’s ethos of openness, whether in pricing, operations, or investor education, mirrors India’s slow but steady push towards greater institutional accountability in governance and finance. By making its revenue model and margins public knowledge, the company has cultivated a level of trust that was almost unheard of in an industry built on asymmetrical information. This unusual candour is reflected in its proactive investor advisories, which caution against speculative trading and promote long-term wealth creation.

As for Kamath, he embodies the archetypal modern Indian success story—a self-made entrepreneur with little reliance on inherited privilege, thriving in an ecosystem of his own making. Like Modi, he is also a storyteller of his own journey, with a knack for connecting with audiences across social strata. In Kamath’s story, Modi likely saw a host who could not only match but amplify the overarching themes of his own narrative. Kamath is in fact a mirror to the story Modi has sought to tell about India itself: that of a nation unburdened by its past, relentlessly innovating its way into the future.

Throughout the podcast, Kamath’s demeanour—unassuming, precise, and unpretentiously intellectual—creates a conversational space that feels both informal and substantive. More crucially, his audience, composed largely of millennials and Gen Z who see the stock market as their first brush with wealth creation, is precisely the demographic Modi aims to energise—not just as voters, but as participants in India’s larger economic and social story. The podcast format itself—long-form, unscripted, conversational—is emblematic of the transparency Modi has often claimed to champion, and Kamath’s natural ability to navigate complexity with clarity makes him a host who can hold his own in such a setting. Above all, in Kamath’s calm precision and honesty, Modi has found the perfect foil—one who could amplify the message without overshadowing it, creating not just a conversation but a statement of India’s evolving ethos.

FinTechIndian youthMTFNarendra Modinew technologiesNikhil KamathpodcasterPrime Minister