4 days ago
Dhan soon to turn unicorn with $200 million fundraise from ChrysCapital, Alpha Wave, MUFG
Online stock trading and investment platform
Dhan
is set to close a $190-200 million round — making it a
unicorn
, said people in the know. Joining the ChrysCapital-led round will be Alpha Wave, among the most prolific foreign investors in India this year, as well as Japanese giant
Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group
(MUFG). The family office of
Bharti Group
chairman Sunil Mittal is also set to join the funding group that includes existing investor
Harsh Jain
, founder of Dream 11.
Investors have been looking to cash in on the boom in young participants in the
Indian capital markets
in the last five years.
ET first reported
in February about
ChrysCapital
being in discussions for a round in Dhan.
The fundraise, which has been in the works for some time, will be a combination of primary capital and secondary sales, valuing the company at $1.1 billion, making it the fifth unicorn of this year.
Follow-on round possible
Tech giants Google and Amazon are also evaluating investments in Dhan through a smaller follow-on round, said the people cited. Existing investors such as Beenext and
Mirae Asset Venture
Investments may also increase their commitments.
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'The round is likely to close in the coming days,' said one of the persons cited. 'It has taken some time as investors have waited to assess the impact of the regulatory changes brought about by Sebi last year on stock brokers.'
Dhan offers stock trading services to high-frequency and professional traders. It had 971,000 active traders as of March 2025, according to NSE data. The Mumbai-based startup
turned profitable in FY24
when it reported a net profit of Rs 155 crore, compared with a loss of Rs 22 crore in the previous fiscal. Revenue rose sevenfold to Rs 380 crore, from Rs 54.2 crore, during the period. The company is currently operating at an annual recurring revenue of Rs 1,000 crore and the founders are trying to benchmark the fintech along public markets through the latest funding.
Dhan was
founded in 2021
by Pravin Jadhav, who was previously chief executive of
Paytm Money
. It raised its
first major institutional round
in 2022, when Mirae Asset Venture, Beenext, 3One4 Capital and others invested $22 million. The latest round, once completed, will see a ninefold jump in valuation from the previous round.
Jadhav, ChrysCapital, Alpha Wave, MUFG, Sunil Mittal's family office and Jain didn't respond to ET's queries.
Stock in trade
At a time when competitors have lost active traders or not added new customers, Dhan has grown its user base by 231,000 over seven months, from 740,000 active users in August last year.
Dhan's rival Groww, which is the largest stock broker in the country in terms of active clients, has
filed its draft prospectus
with Sebi through the confidential route for an initial public offering (IPO), through which it hopes to raise $1 billion. The Peak XV Partners-backed startup is looking to close a $200 million pre-IPO fundraise that will value the startup at $6.5 billion.
Investors are also closely tracking Angel One, which is a listed techbacked stock broker, said one of the persons quoted earlier. The valuation ask in the private market is increasingly getting aligned with public market valuations, the person said.
Angel One closed FY25 with operating revenue of Rs 5,238 crore, up 22.6% from Rs 4,271.6 crore in FY24. Its market capitalisation is at Rs 27,297 crore.
Two factors have worked in Dhan's favour, experts said. It has a profitable business model and focuses on high-frequency power users. This ensures its customer base will remain sticky even in a highly competitive market, according to a partner at a venture fund who had evaluated the startup.
Industry evolving
The capital raise comes at a crucial time for wealth management startups. While the bull run in Indian stock exchanges through last year helped stock brokers grow their business exponentially, this year has turned out to be tricky for them, given the recent regulatory clampdown.
In November last year, Sebi introduced
more stringent rules
for the highly speculative futures and options (F&O) segment. Industry insiders pointed out that the move could affect around 30% of revenue for large stock brokers, which typically get 70-80% of their revenue from F&O trading. 'Given that Dhan has its focus on very serious traders, the effect on them could be lower,' said the investor quoted above.
Over the past four years, the number of demat accounts in India has soared from 40 million to 150 million. Most of these new investors are under 35, digitally savvy, and armed with user-friendly apps such as Zerodha, Groww, Dhan or Upstox. Groww, with around 13 million active traders — and Zerodha and Angel One with upwards of 7 million active users each — dominate the stock broking space. The top three discount brokers cumulatively have close to 40% market share in terms of active traders currently.
As of last year, discount brokers accounted for 36% of total revenue and 44% of profit in the industry, eating into the business of legacy broking houses such as Motilal Oswal, JM Financial and ICICI Securities, among others, thanks to their high-volume, low-cost, tech-driven model.
However, regulators have been wary of the increasing inflow of retail money into F&O. Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) data show the number of individual traders in F&O nearly doubled between FY22 and FY24. As many as 113 million of F&O participants are individuals, but over 105 million (nearly 93%) suffered net losses, triggering the regulatory intervention.
