The number that reframes the question

Indian mutual funds paid out ₹27,335 crore in distribution commission in FY 2024–25. That is the money that comes out of scheme expenses and goes to whoever sold you the fund, and it is the single largest pool of “free app” revenue in Indian personal finance.

The interesting part is who got it. Of that pool, ₹21,106 crore — 77.2% — went to just 3,158 distributors. Broken down by type, wealth managers and corporate distributors took ₹11,629 crore and banks took ₹6,330 crore. Fintech platforms took ₹458 crore, about 1.7% of the total.

That last number is inconvenient for the argument an app founder would like to make, so it goes first. The apps most people worry about are not where mutual fund commission money actually goes. It goes to bank relationship managers and to wealth management firms. If you want to know who is paid to put you in a regular plan, the honest answer is: mostly not an app.

What each one is registered as

Registration is the most reliable fact available about a finance company, because it is a matter of public record and it constrains what the company is allowed to earn. A registered investment adviser cannot take commission on products it advises you to buy. A mutual fund distributor can, and is paid out of the scheme’s expense ratio. Several of these apps hold both, through different group companies. That is legal, disclosed, and worth knowing.

Two rows are worth pausing on. INDmoney is not a company, it is a group — the adviser registration, the broking registration and the insurance corporate agency each sit in a different legal entity behind one app icon. And the last row is not a boast: holding no registrations means TLDR Money is not allowed to sell you a fund, an insurance policy or a loan, which is the whole design, and also a real limitation.

Where the money comes from

Now the revenue itself. The last column is doing deliberate work: Groww and Paytm are listed companies with audited disclosure, while Kuvera and The 1% Club are private companies whose numbers reach the public through filings reported at second hand. Those are not the same quality of fact and this table should not pretend otherwise.

The scale range in that column is worth reading twice. Zerodha earned roughly ₹8,500 crore in FY26. Kuvera earned ₹6.2 crore in FY25 while custodying around ₹28,000 crore of investor assets. TLDR Money has earned nothing at all. These are eight companies in the same App Store category and they are not remotely the same kind of business.

Brokerage stopped being the answer

The most interesting thing in the FY26 numbers is that the revenue line everyone associates with these apps is shrinking, and something else is replacing it.

Zerodha’s brokerage income fell 10.7% to ₹2,738 crore in FY26. Its net transaction charges went from ₹810 crore in FY24 to ₹400 crore in FY25 to zero in FY26. Meanwhile its income from margin trading and delayed payments went from ₹22 crore in FY25 to ₹448 crore in FY26 — roughly twentyfold in a single year. Its margin trading book stood near ₹9,000 crore in August 2026, and margin lending is now about 10% of revenue.

Groww shows the same rotation from the other side. Stocks and equity derivatives were 75.7% of its income in Q1 FY26 and 68.4% a year later, with the difference picked up by margin trading, personal loans and loans against securities.

What makes this more than a trend line is that Zerodha’s founder wrote about it himself. In his annual letter on 26 August 2026, Nithin Kamath said of the margin book: “The problem with leverage is that it gives you a boost when things are good. But when things go bad, they can get bad really, really quickly.” He went on to describe the sector-wide surge in margin lending as scary, noting that brokers may lend up to five times their net worth.

Read that as a founder publicly uncomfortable with his own fastest-growing revenue line. It is a good argument for the thesis at the top of this page: the revenue line comes first, and the product follows it, sometimes faster than the people running the company would like.

The distributor became the manufacturer

The second structural change is quieter. Companies that started by selling other people’s funds now make funds.

Groww bought the mutual fund business of Indiabulls Housing Finance for ₹175.6 crore and runs Groww Mutual Fund, which SEBI lists under its former Indiabulls name. Zerodha runs Zerodha Fund House. So the app that shows you a list of funds may also be the company whose funds are on the list, and it earns a management fee when you pick one of its own.

This is disclosed and entirely legal. It is also a genuine change in what these companies are, and it is the reason a “we only offer direct plans, so we have no conflict” claim is now less complete than it was five years ago. A direct plan pays no distribution commission. It still pays an expense ratio, and that expense ratio can be going to the same corporate group.

What a percentage costs and what a flat fee costs

Here is the arithmetic underneath the whole category, with the assumptions stated.

Assumptions. An equity portfolio held in mutual funds. A regular plan carries a total expense ratio roughly 1.0 percentage point higher than the direct plan of the same scheme, which sits inside the commonly reported 0.5 to 1.5 point range. Trail commission on equity funds runs about 0.30% to 1.25% a year. The subscription is TLDR Money’s annual price of ₹1,999. Nothing here is compounded and no returns are assumed — this is one year’s cost at three portfolio sizes.

This is not a like-for-like comparison and it should not be read as one. A distributor sells you the fund and may advise you on it. A direct platform executes your order and charges you nothing for it. A tracker does neither — it tells you what you already own. Three different jobs. The only point the table makes is about the shape of the fee: a percentage grows with your wealth without the work growing with it, and a flat fee does not. That is arithmetic, not an accusation, and it applies to a subscription too — on a small portfolio, ₹1,999 is the most expensive column on the row.

TLDR Money, on the same criteria

Applying the audit to the company writing it.

TLDR Money is operated by Sonal Systems Private Limited in Vadodara. It holds no SEBI, AMFI or IRDAI registration, because it sells no financial product. It has one revenue line: a subscription at ₹299 a month or ₹1,999 a year, with a founding rate of ₹999 for the first year for a limited number of early users. There is a 14-day trial that takes no card. It reads transaction alerts from Gmail read-only, rolls holdings into a single net worth figure, and projects a retirement date.

And the parts that do not flatter it. TLDR Money is not open to everyone yet — it runs a waitlist and opens seats in batches, which is why the buttons on the pricing page are dormant. It has no revenue to report, because it has not launched. It is funded by its founders, not by customers, which means the alignment described on this site is currently a design commitment rather than a demonstrated fact. Every other company in the table has customers paying it today. That is a real difference and it belongs in the row.

The full statement of the model, kept short deliberately, is on the how we make money page.

How to check any of this yourself

None of this required special access. Four public sources cover almost all of it, and the whole audit took an afternoon.

1. Find the legal entity. Scroll to the bottom of any finance app’s website. Indian companies must show the operating entity and usually the CIN. The app name is marketing; the entity is the company.
2. Look up what it is registered as. SEBI publishes its intermediary registers, AMFI publishes distributor ARNs, IRDAI publishes corporate agents. A broker number starts INZ, an adviser number starts INA, a distributor is an ARN. Different prefixes mean different rules about who is allowed to pay them.
3. Read the terms page, not the landing page. The landing page says what the product does. The terms page lists the group entities and what each one is permitted to sell you, and it is where the insurance corporate agency usually appears.
4. Find the revenue. Listed companies publish quarterly results and shareholder letters. Private companies file with the MCA and those filings get reported. Then ask the only question that matters: which line is the biggest, and what behaviour makes it grow?

Do that for whichever app currently holds your money. It is a more useful twenty minutes than another comparison of user interfaces, and it also explains what you find when you look at why the returns on capital and the returns on labour diverge — these companies sit on the capital side of that line, and you are the labour side handing them the float.

Questions worth asking

How does Groww make money?

Groww’s largest revenue line is brokerage on stocks and equity derivatives, which was 68.4% of income in Q1 FY27, down from 75.7% a year earlier. The rest comes from interest on its margin trading facility, personal loans and loans against securities through its NBFC, mutual fund distribution, and management fees from its own asset management company. It reported operating revenue of ₹4,644.6 crore in FY26.

Is Kuvera actually free to use?

Kuvera charges you nothing to buy direct mutual fund plans, and direct plans pay no distribution commission, so there is no commission being taken out of your returns either. Kuvera is operated by Arevuk Advisory Services, a SEBI registered investment adviser, and was acquired by CRED in February 2024. It reported revenue of ₹6.2 crore in FY25. Beyond that figure, its current revenue lines are not publicly disclosed.

Does Zerodha Coin charge a commission on mutual funds?

No. Zerodha’s own terms state that Coin is an order collection platform for direct mutual funds and that transactions are treated as direct, which means no distribution commission is paid out of the scheme. Zerodha charges no separate fee for mutual fund orders on Coin. The fund’s own exit loads and expense ratio still apply, and Zerodha earns elsewhere, mainly from brokerage and margin lending.

How does INDmoney make money if it does not charge me?

INDmoney is not one company but a group. Finzoom Investment Advisors holds the SEBI investment adviser registration, INDstocks holds the stock broking registration, and Finzoomers Services is an IRDAI registered corporate agent that distributes insurance. Revenue therefore comes from broking, US stock investing, deposits and insurance distribution. The group reported operating revenue of ₹164 crore in FY25 and says less than 10% of revenue comes from trading-led activity.

What is the difference between a SEBI registered investment adviser and a mutual fund distributor?

A registered investment adviser is paid a fee by you and cannot earn commission on the products it advises you to buy. A mutual fund distributor is paid a trail commission by the asset management company, taken out of the scheme’s expense ratio, so it is paid more when you hold more and when you hold costlier products. Several apps hold both registrations through different group companies, which is legal and disclosed.

Related

Sources

• Business Today, “Regular vs direct mutual funds: How much are you paying your distributor?”, 11 August 2026 — FY 2024–25 commission pool of ₹27,335 crore and its split by distributor type — businesstoday.in
• Nithin Kamath, “16 years of Zerodha”, 26 August 2026 — margin book size and the quoted remarks on leverage — nithinkamath.substack.com
• Business Standard, “Zerodha’s Nithin Kamath says surge in margin lending could be ‘scary’”, 27 August 2026 — business-standard.com
• Entrackr, “Zerodha reports Rs 4,283 Cr profit in FY26; revenue remains flat” — FY26 profit, brokerage, transaction charges and margin trading income, from MCA filings — entrackr.com
• Zerodha, Coin terms of service — direct-plan-only order collection, operating entity and SEBI registration numbers — zerodha.com
• Inc42, “Inside Groww’s Revenue Mix: What Comes After Broking” — segment shares for Q1 FY26 and Q1 FY27 — inc42.com
• SEBI, Groww Mutual Fund (formerly Indiabulls Mutual Fund) fund details — sebi.gov.in
• INDmoney, Terms of Services — group entities and their SEBI, AMFI, IRDAI and IFSCA registrations — indmoney.com
• Business Standard, “Wealth management firm 360 ONE acquires ET Money for Rs 366 crore”, 12 June 2024 — the two acquired entities and their FY24 turnover — business-standard.com
• Inc42, “Sharan Hegde’s The 1% Club Gets RIA Licence From SEBI” — the adviser licence, course pricing and assets under advice — inc42.com

This is an explanation, not advice about your money. TLDR Money is not a registered investment adviser and earns no commission on any product mentioned. Every figure carries the financial year it belongs to and was verified on 29 August 2026; company revenue moves, registrations change, and this page is reviewed annually. Where a figure comes from a private company’s filings reported at second hand rather than an audited disclosure, the table says so. If you find an error, the sources above are the place to start and I would rather hear about it than not.