Dhan is a stock broking and trading platform company based in India, run by Raise Financial Services, that offers multi-asset trading and investing tools for retail investors and traders.

This Startup Deep Dive explains what Dhan does, how it makes money, who backs it, how it compares with rivals and what could go wrong, using publicly available information. It is educational and not investment advice. Last updated: October 2026.

Dhan in Brief

• What it is: Dhan is an Indian Discount broking platform company based in Mumbai.
• Who it serves: consumers, merchants, banks, lenders and enterprises.
• Dhan is a multi-asset trading platform operated by Raise Securities (formerly Moneylicious Securities) under parent Raise Financial Services, for equities, derivatives and commodities.
• It launched in November 2021 and offers options and charting tools, a TradingView 'Direct Trade via Charts' integration, a free API and a margin trading book.
• It reported about 9.8 lakh active clients (2.2% share) in December 2025 and about 17 lakh active clients and 2.3% share in March 2026 per different reports, so reports differ.
• Funding: About $142 million in total including the $120 million Series B (reported).

Dhan Quick Facts

Figures marked “reported” come from published reports and may differ between sources; “Not disclosed” means no reliable public figure was found.

What Is Dhan?

Dhan operates in the Discount broking platform space in India. Understanding a company like this starts with three questions: who is the customer, what painful problem is being solved, and why the solution is better than the alternatives. The sections below apply that lens to Dhan.

• Dhan is a multi-asset trading platform operated by Raise Securities (formerly Moneylicious Securities) under parent Raise Financial Services, for equities, derivatives and commodities.
• It launched in November 2021 and offers options and charting tools, a TradingView 'Direct Trade via Charts' integration, a free API and a margin trading book.
• It reported about 9.8 lakh active clients (2.2% share) in December 2025 and about 17 lakh active clients and 2.3% share in March 2026 per different reports, so reports differ.
• Raise acquired Mumbai-based broker Moneylicious Securities in August 2021 for its broking licences.

The Origin Story of Dhan

Every company starts from a noticed gap and a team willing to commit to closing it. Strong origin stories are specific: a clear problem, a founding team with relevant skills, and an early product that real customers could test. Founder-market fit, meaning the team’s lived experience or technical depth in the domain, tends to predict how fast a young company learns.

• Founders: Pravin Jadhav, Alok Pandey, Jay Prakash Gupta, Raunak Rathi.
• Raise Financial Services was founded in January 2021 by Pravin Jadhav, former founder and CEO of Paytm Money, with Alok Pandey, Jay Prakash Gupta and Raunak Rathi.
• A seed round came in February 2021 from Mirae Asset Venture Investments, Blume Ventures Founders Fund, Social Leverage and angels including Kunal Shah and Miten Sampat (reported).
• The registered and corporate office is in Goregaon West, Mumbai.

Key Milestones and Challenges

No startup grows in a straight line. Early years usually involve slow adoption, product rewrites, hiring mistakes and funding gaps. In the Discount broking platform sector the common turning points are a first paying customer, a regulatory approval, a successful product demonstration or a funding round that lets the team invest ahead of demand. How a team responds to setbacks says more about resilience than any single headline.

• January 2021: Raise Financial Services founded.
• August 2021: acquired Moneylicious Securities for broking licences; November 2021: Dhan launched.
• 2022: $22 million Series A led by BEENEXT at a reported $125 million valuation.
• FY25: revenue from operations Rs 877 crore, profit Rs 408 crore.
• October 2025: $120 million Series B, unicorn status at $1.2 billion.
• March 2026: ranked ninth among NSE brokers by active clients with 2.3% share (ICRA).

Dhan Funding and Investors

Funding history shows how much outside confidence a company has attracted and how long it can operate before needing more capital. Figures below are reported and may differ between sources; valuation figures are estimates unless the company has confirmed them.

• Seed, February 2021, from Mirae Asset Venture Investments, Blume Ventures Founders Fund, Social Leverage and angels (reported).
• Series A, 2022: $22M led by BEENEXT, reported valuation $125M.
• Series B, 2025: $120M led by Hornbill Capital with MUFG, a mix of primary and secondary (reported).

How Does Dhan Make Money? (Business Model)

A business model describes who pays, how often and how much it costs to serve them. Strong models show repeat usage, improving margins with scale and acquisition channels that do not depend only on paid spend. Weak models show one-off sales, rising costs and growth that stops when spending stops. For companies selling to consumers, merchants, banks, lenders and enterprises, sales cycles and contract size matter as much as headline growth.

• Revenue comes mainly from brokerage fees and commissions on equity, derivatives and commodities trading, about 88% of FY25 operating revenue.
• Other operating revenue includes margin trading interest; margin book more than doubled to Rs 505 crore by end-FY26.
• Heavy reliance on retail F&O trading volumes, which rose from Rs 58,000 crore (FY23) to Rs 11.87 lakh crore (FY26) in derivatives volume (report).

The Numbers: Dhan Financials

Financial figures show whether growth is turning into a self-sustaining business. Small and private companies often disclose little, so any number below is included only if it was found in public reporting.

• FY24: revenue from operations about Rs 371 crore; profit Rs 159 crore; total expenses Rs 175 crore.
• FY25: revenue from operations Rs 877 crore (about 2.3x); total income Rs 887 crore; profit Rs 408 crore (about 2.6x); total expenses Rs 341 crore; brokerage Rs 769 crore (88%); EBITDA margin 63.25%; ROCE 91.9%.
• FY26: net operating income about Rs 905 crore, up 14% from Rs 795 crore; profit about Rs 326 crore, down 20%; net worth Rs 916 crore (ICRA-based report).
• FY26 revenue mix: about 79% of net operating income from broking; retail F&O about 70% (reports differ at 70-79%).

Market Opportunity for Dhan

Market size is easy to exaggerate, so a useful approach separates the total market from the portion a company can realistically reach with its current product and distribution. The main forces behind demand in this sector are the scale of UPI, rising digital lending, growing participation in investing and insurance, and the digitisation of small merchants. Each of these widens the opportunity, but capital efficiency and execution decide who captures it.

• India's retail broking market is led by discount brokers; Dhan held about 2.3% share by active clients in March 2026.
• Competitors compete on flat-fee brokerage of about Rs 20 per F&O order and on options tooling.

Technology and Product at Dhan

Technology is rarely the whole moat, but it drives speed, cost and customer experience. A practical way to assess it is to separate the capability the company controls from the commodity infrastructure it rents. In this sector the important factors are uptime, security, fraud controls, integrations with banks and the speed of onboarding customers.

• Options-focused platform with option chain analytics, strategy builder and TradingView chart-based order placement.
• Free API access (per comparison blogs) and AI infrastructure investment planned with Series B funds.

Team and Culture at Dhan

Teams are the most important and least measurable asset of a young company. Look at how complementary the founders’ skills are, how deep the second layer of leadership is, and how the company hires and retains specialists. Culture shows up in small repeated behaviours: how quickly bad news travels upward and whether commitments to customers are kept.

• Pravin Jadhav is founder and CEO, formerly founder and CEO of Paytm Money.
• Co-founders reported: Alok Pandey, Jay Prakash Gupta and Raunak Rathi.

Dhan Competitors: Competitive Landscape

A fair competitive analysis names direct rivals, adjacent players who could move into the space, and the customer’s default alternative. Durable advantages include proprietary data or technology, licences and approvals, brand trust, switching costs and cost leadership.

Risks and Challenges for Dhan

• FY26 net profit fell about 20% despite revenue growth as marketing and team costs rose.
• Revenue is concentrated in brokerage, mainly retail F&O, and tied to trading activity and F&O regulation.
• Expense ratio is similar to Zerodha and Groww, leaving little cost advantage.
• Regulatory risk: rules from the RBI, SEBI, IRDAI or NPCI can change economics or business scope quickly.
• Concentration risk: dependence on a few partners, banks or payment rails can create single points of failure.

Risk is not a reason to avoid a company; it is a reason to price it correctly and to monitor the right indicators over time. Regulation in this sector is shaped by the RBI, SEBI, IRDAI and NPCI.

Dhan Growth Outlook: What to Watch

• Series B proceeds are aimed at scale, technology and AI infrastructure, and new investment and financial services distribution products.
• Debt facilities of Rs 100 crore (bank line) and Rs 50 crore (commercial paper) were proposed, per the ICRA-based report.
• Key indicators: transaction value, take rate, active users, credit quality and cost of acquiring each customer.
• Funding position: Whether Dhan can reach its next milestone before needing new capital.
• Regulation: Changes from the RBI, SEBI, IRDAI and NPCI.

Industry Context: Where Dhan Fits

India's financial technology sector has been shaped by public digital infrastructure, especially UPI, along with Aadhaar-based identity, the account aggregator framework and regulation from the RBI, SEBI and IRDAI. These rails let startups reach customers and merchants at very low cost, but also expose them to fast-changing rules on licensing, data and lending conduct.

As payments become a low-margin commodity, fintech companies increasingly compete on distribution, merchant services, credit, wealth and insurance products. Sustainable profit usually depends on compliance strength, cost control and the quality of customer relationships rather than transaction volume alone.

For readers new to this field, a useful habit is to separate announcements from evidence. A plan, a partnership or a funding headline describes intent, while a delivered product, a paying customer or an audited financial statement describes results. Comparing the two over time shows how reliably a company turns promises into outcomes.

Bull Case and Bear Case for Dhan

An investment thesis is a short, testable statement of why a company could become far more valuable, together with what evidence would prove it wrong. The points below are general to this sector and are not forecasts for Dhan.

Bull case

• Digital payments and credit continue to grow, widening the market.
• Strong compliance and distribution create durable advantages.
• Cross-selling to existing customers can lift revenue per user.

Bear case

• Regulatory shifts can change economics overnight.
• Free or low-fee products make profit hard to reach.
• Fraud, outages and partner dependence can hurt trust.

Lessons Founders and Investors Can Take from Dhan

Studying a company in the Discount broking platform space offers lessons that go beyond any single firm. The points below are general lessons for the sector and are not claims about Dhan.

• Compliance is a growth enabler in financial services, not just a cost, because licences decide what a company is allowed to sell.
• Distribution and customer trust often matter more than the underlying payment or lending technology.
• Products that earn from services and credit tend to be steadier than ones that depend on free transactions.
• Dependence on a single bank partner or rail creates risk that should be managed early.
• Fraud prevention and uptime are core product features, not back-office tasks.

How to Evaluate Dhan as a Startup

• Customer clarity: Can Dhan name its customer and the problem it solves in one sentence?
• Evidence of demand: Look for repeat customers, signed contracts or measurable usage rather than announcements alone.
• Economics: Check whether margins improve as volume grows.
• Execution: Compare announced timelines with what has actually been delivered.
• Funding runway: Estimate how long current capital lasts at the present spending rate.
• Regulatory standing: Confirm required approvals are in place.
• Customer concentration: Check whether a few customers account for most of the revenue.
• Management depth: Look for experienced leaders beyond the founders and a stable core team.

The Takeaway

Dhan is part of India’s growing Discount broking platform ecosystem. The useful lesson from studying it is the discipline of asking structured questions about customers, economics, advantage and resilience. Companies that answer them well, repeatedly and under pressure are the ones that endure. Readers should treat any single report, ranking or funding headline as one input among many, and should re-check key facts against recent company announcements. Because public information on young companies is often limited, patience in verifying claims is part of good analysis. Public sources can also describe the same company in different ways, so it is worth checking dates, definitions and whether a figure refers to revenue, total income or transaction value, and whether it covers one entity or a wider group, before drawing conclusions. Small differences in rounding, currency conversion or reporting periods can also change how a figure reads. Comparing the same figure across several recent reports helps show whether it is stable or has changed over time. This article is educational and is not investment advice.

• Clear customers and repeat demand matter more than announcements.
• Regulation and capital needs shape how fast a startup in this sector can grow.
• Track a few leading indicators over time rather than one headline metric.

Dhan FAQs: Frequently Asked Questions

What is Dhan?

Dhan is a stock broking and trading platform company based in India, run by Raise Financial Services, that offers multi-asset trading and investing tools for retail investors and traders. It is profiled in the Startup Deep Dive series, which explains business model, funding, competitors and risks.

Who founded Dhan?

Dhan was founded by Pravin Jadhav, Alok Pandey, Jay Prakash Gupta, Raunak Rathi, and the company reports a founding year of 2021.

How much funding has Dhan raised?

About $142 million in total including the $120 million Series B (reported). Funding figures are reported and may differ between sources, so readers should check the latest company announcements.

How does Dhan make money?

Dhan earns revenue from its Discount broking platform products and services sold to consumers, merchants, banks, lenders and enterprises. The exact revenue mix is described in the business model section and is not fully disclosed publicly.

Who are the competitors of Dhan?

Reported rivals include Zerodha, Groww, Upstox. See the competitor comparison above for how they differ.

What are the main risks for Dhan?

Main risks include rules from the rbi, sebi, irdai or npci can change economics or business scope quickly, funding and capital needs, competition and regulation by the RBI, SEBI, IRDAI and NPCI. This is educational content, not investment advice.

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Source

Source: Publicly available data, published reports, industry research, and other credible sources.