When Anand Rathi Share and Stock Brokers went public in September, few expected fireworks. The 30-year-old full-service broker isn’t exactly the poster child of fintech ambition. Yet its Rs 745 crore IPO drew bids worth 22X the offer—and the stock popped even in a sluggish market.

Now, the stage belongs to another player that changed how India trades: Groww. The company plans to go public in November, reportedlyMoneycontrolGroww eyes up to $9 billion valuation, to file updated IPO papers this week  seeking a valuation as high as $9 billion, the biggest IPO ever in India’s broking space. And it has put its best foot forward: Rs 4,060 crore in revenue and Rs 1,824 crore in profit for FY25.

That’s a 3X surge in profit in a year when most discount brokers were reeling from Sebi’s crackdownThe KenNSE’s monopoly is on borrowed time as Sebi squeezes its star player on the F&O party. Zerodha’s* annual profit fellZerodha15 years of Zerodha — The risk crystallises about 20%; Angel One’s was almost flat due to a dismalThe KenAngel One got what it wished for. That’s the problem March quarter. Groww, meanwhile, seemed to defy gravity.

Except it didn’t.

Behind the spurt in the bottom line lies a tangle of one-offs—the details of which are tucked away in the maze of numbers in its IPO document. A one-time tax expense, thanks to the company’s domicile shift from the US to India in March 2024, and a couple of big incentives it awarded its management, dragged Groww’s bottom line into the red in FY24.

Groww’s broking business—its mainstay—is not exactly insulated from Sebi’s heat, either. The Ken previously reportedThe KenGroww’s IPO pitch: we are more than a discount broker. Investors: Really? Show us how the company has been trying hard for a makeover before listing—from being just a discount broker to projecting itself as a financial supermarket.