My phone constantly on silent because...: Nikhil Kamath on why chasing 'engagement' made internet annoying

Nikhil Kamath, Zerodha CEO, has again reignited debate on social media regarding phones being on silent after a social media praised his stockbroking firm for not sending unwanted emails and notifications in the name of user engagement.

"With everybody chasing "engagement," we seem to have made many things on the internet annoying and unusable. My own phone is constantly on silent because of annoying calls, notifications, emails, etc," said Nikhil in a post on X.

Further talking on his company's policy, he added that from day one of @zerodhaonline, "don't do unto others what you don't want done unto you" has been at the core of firm's philosophy. "We don't send an email or a notification unless it's important. Counter-intuitively, this is why people trust us? Not triggering users to trade hurts the business, but in the long run, it's good for the customers," said the top entepreneur on his social media account on X.


The reply was in response to thewysetrader, a user named Dhurv who said "the only broker that never pushes you to trade in any form whatsoever is @zerodhaonline. No notifications, no emails nothing. It's remarkable how they have grown so much."

Reaction to Nikhil's post:
Social media users came flooding in to agree with the CEO. "Fully agree. There are never any calls or messages encouraging to trade or invest from @zerodhaonline . Even my 2 decades old account from IIFL; they keep messaging, emailing or even calls from "RM" encouraging to continuing doing something, trading, investing," said Neeraj Sharma.

"Totally agree on this. Not just in broking, every other industry also has this plague and governments have to take stern action on this," said Raj Konakalla in reply to Nikhil.

Recently, tech entrepreneur Nikhil Kamath and venture debt fund Stride Ventures have acquired significant minority stakes in Streambox Media, a media-tech venture founded by media executive Anuj Gandhi and backed by Micromax. The company has not disclosed the exact stake it has acquired and the valuation. Though Micromax owns the majority stake in the company, Gandhi holds a sizeable minority stake.