Interview: Prabhakar Tiwari, CGO, Angel One Ltd.

"We Will Strengthen Our Leadership Position To Become The Largest Retail Broking Business In India"

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What is your outlook on the Indian retail broking industry? Can you highlight the changing behaviour of retail investors post-pandemic?

The Indian retail broking industry has been growing over the years, and this trend will continue in the future as well. This will be driven by digital players like us, as we penetrate further into untapped markets on the back of our digital products. Reports suggest that participation of individual investors in equity cash segment turnover increased over the years to 40.7 per cent in FY22 from 33.0 per cent in FY16. Retail investors owned 9.7 per cent of Nifty-listed companies as of December 2021 compared to 8.6 per cent in March 2019, with the majority of the increase coming in nine months in FY22.

It is worth noting that retail investors have almost fully offset the reduction in ownership by FIIs over this period. In FY22, retail investors made a net investment of ₹2.1 trillion, in both cash and derivatives segments, through the NSE platform compared to ₹1.1 trillion in FY21. More specifically, in the last six months of FY22, i.e. from September 2021 to March 2022, while FIIs were net sellers to the tune of ₹1.9 trillion. This was offset by investments of ₹1.1 trillion in the cash segment by the retail investors. It is a dramatic shift in the retail investors' behavior. We strongly believe that as the retail penetration increases from the current 6.4 per cent over time, this share in overall ownership and investments in stock markets will increase going forward.

Angel One experienced its best-ever quarter in Q4FY22 across operational and financial metrics. What are the key drivers responsible for such robust multifold growth across parameters?