'Keep an eye out for our first NFO': Zerodha AMC gets final approval from SEBI, announces Nithin Kamath

Nithin Kamath, founder and CEO of Zerodha, said on Friday that the low-cost brokerage got the final approval for its mutual fund from Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI). Kamath said Zerodha is building the AMC in partnership with smallcase.

"We just received the final approval for the Zerodha Fund House we are building in partnership with smallcase," announced Kamath on X.

Kamath announced Vishal Jain as the CEO of Zerodha AMC.

"I'm also excited that Vishal Jain, who's been part of the entire passive investing journey in India from day 1, has joined us as a CEO to build the AMC. So yeah, keep an eye out for our first NFO," said Kamath.

A New Fund Offer (NFO) allows a mutual fund house to raise the money required to purchase stocks or debt instruments. Kamath said Zerodha's motivation to start a mutual fund was 'twofold'.

"Our motivation to start a mutual fund was twofold. The first was that the biggest challenge and opportunity for Indian markets is the shallow participation. Even after all the growth over the last 3 years, we only have maybe 6-8 crore unique mutual fund and equity investors put together.   

"The second was that if we had to bring in the next ten million investors, they needed simple products they could understand, and mutual funds were a perfect instrument. We aim to be index-only and create simple funds and ETFs that all investors can understand and invest in for all their goals," he said.

On Thursday, Helios Capital founder Samir Arora announced that the investment firm got SEBI nod for Helios Mutual Fund.