In India’s fast-growing wealth-management market, the perks lie in finding rich and uber-rich clients, and advising them on plum investment opportunities. But for Nuvama Wealth, the country’s second-largest independent wealth manager, the game is not just to advise clients, but also to execute their trades.

In FY25, Nuvama generated Rs 655 crore from this segment—formally called clearing-and-custody servicesClearing and custody servicesFor custodian services, Nuvama acts as an intermediary between its institutional clients and clearing corporation, and ensures the former's assets (such as funds and securities) are kept safe. Under clearing services, it validates the clients' trades, provides margining, risk management, and also ensures seamless settlement or asset services. It now makes up about a quarter of the company’s overall revenue, compared to 16% in FY21. The vertical also accounts for over one-third of Nuvama’s total profit before tax, according to two analysts and back-of-the-envelope calculations by The Ken. That’s almost as much as its core wealth-management business brought inNuvama presentation, BSE.

In fact, holding assets and executing trades for large institutional clients (think hedge funds, alternative funds, and mutual funds) is a big deal for Nuvama (carved out of Edelweiss). And Jane Street, the US-based quant firm that market regulator Sebi bannedThe HinduSEBI bans U.S.-based Jane Street for index manipulation amounting to over Rs 4,800 crore from trading in early July, is one of its major clients. (In January, The Ken reportedThe KenThe mystery fund playing God and wreaking havoc on the stock market about a mystery fund playing God in India’s options market and followed it up with another storyThe KenIs Jane Street the all-powerful hidden hand in India’s stock market? in June that pointed to Jane Street.)

Put simply, the company, backed by private-equity firm PAG, has quietly turned a vanilla back-office function into a profit machine.

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