Groww: If Your Customers Don't Love It or Hate It, You've Already Lost
Lalit Keshre, co-founder of Groww, discusses the company's journey from a failed robo-advisor to India's largest investment platform, emphasizing customer obsession, radical transparency, and organic growth. He shares how Groww achieved product-market fit within 10-15 days of launching their revamped product in May 2017 by showing all investment products with full transparency. The conversation covers co-founder alignment, navigating regulation, and how AI is lowering barriers to building consumer products.
Summary
Lalit Keshre, co-founder of Groww (now a publicly listed company), joins YC's John at a startup event to discuss building a generational consumer fintech company in India. Keshre grew up in a small city in central India where his grandmother wanted him to become an IAS officer, but exposure to Steve Jobs and the dot-com boom at IIT Bombay sparked his entrepreneurial interest.
Groww was not Keshre's first startup — it was his third if counting a student venture — and even Groww itself pivoted significantly. The company started in May 2016 as a robo-advisor, inspired by US products like Wealthfront and Betterment, targeting India's surprisingly low investor base of under 20 million despite hundreds of millions of online shoppers. The robo-advisor failed, and after a year of iteration driven by customer feedback (primarily through WhatsApp groups, Quora, and even conversations outside movie theaters), the team launched the current Groww product in May 2017: a platform showing all mutual fund products with full transparency and frictionless payments.
The relaunch was an immediate signal of product-market fit — they expected 100 customers in the first month and got 600. Growth was almost entirely organic and word-of-mouth, a pattern that holds true even today. Keshre emphasizes that customers never explicitly asked for 'full transparency' — the team had to read between the lines of customer complaints and questions to identify the real friction.
On monetization, Groww made a bold bet: they switched from commission-based mutual funds to zero-commission direct mutual funds after power users demanded it, sacrificing revenue for four years. The thesis was that a product with near-zero CAC, high retention, high engagement, and high customer love that moves significant money is 'very hard to find a company that does not make money.' Stocks eventually unlocked the monetization lever.
Keshre discusses Groww's strategic decision to operate only in regulated financial zones, which simplified decision-making and reduced variables. He also shares a key product philosophy: when launching any feature, he wants customers to either love it or hate it — indifference means the feature doesn't matter.
On co-founder dynamics with four founders, Keshre attributes their alignment to three things: deeply aligned value systems documented early on (with 'customer first' as the first principle), clear ownership structures, and genuinely enjoying each other's company even after a decade.
Looking forward, Keshre sees wealth management as Groww's next big opportunity as their early customers age and accumulate more assets. On AI, he notes that the 'what to build' question remains unchanged — understanding customer needs is still paramount — but the 'how to build' has become dramatically easier, with one person now able to do what previously required a team of 10-15.
Key Insights
- Keshre argues that Groww's product-market fit signal came not from asking customers what they wanted, but from reading between the lines — customers never said 'show me all products with full transparency,' but their questions revealed that lack of choice and opacity were the real blockers.
- Keshre claims that Groww operated as a zero-revenue company for four years after switching to zero-commission direct mutual funds, betting that a product with near-zero CAC, high retention, high engagement, and high customer love that moves large sums of money would inevitably find a monetization path.
- Keshre states that when launching any feature, he tells his team they should receive only two types of customer reactions — 'this is awesome, I love it' or 'this is terrible, I hate it' — because indifference means customers don't care about what was built, which is the real failure signal.
- Keshre describes Groww's co-founder alignment strategy as writing down their value systems in a detailed document at the very start — treating values as written in pen (permanent) and strategy as written in pencil (changeable) — which he claims eliminated most conflicts over 10 years.
- Keshre argues that in the AI era, the 'what to build' question — understanding customer needs — remains unchanged and still requires deep customer intimacy, but the 'how to build' has collapsed dramatically: one person can now handle design, product management, coding, and operations automation where previously 10-15 people were required.
Topics
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