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From Brokers to Apps: A Bibliometric and Thematic Review of Retail Investor Adoption and Satisfaction with Online Investment Platforms in India (The International tax journal)

Research paperThe International tax journalNovember 202616 pages24 min readKajal Jayantbhai Pandya, Gaurang PrajapatiOriginal source
Key number
21.6 crore
Total demat accounts in India p.2
Largest segment
76–78%
Discount brokers share of active NSE clients p.9
What changed
fell by about 20%
Individual equity derivatives traders after SEBI reforms p.9

Summary

  • As of December 2025, India has approximately 21.6 crore demat accounts, with 17.3 crore held at CDSL and 4.3 crore at NSDL.p.2
  • By the end of 2025, the National Stock Exchange (NSE) reported 12.2 crore unique registered investors, with individual investors holding 18.75% of the market.p.2
  • SEBI's Investor Survey 2025 revealed that 63% of households are aware of at least one securities product, but only 9.5% invest in securities markets.p.2
  • An updated SEBI study in September 2024 showed that 93% of over 1 crore individual F&O traders lost money between FY22 and FY24, with aggregate losses exceeding ₹1.8 lakh crore.p.9
  • Groww became the largest broker by NSE active clients by September 2023 and recorded 12.6 million active clients with a 26.3% share of NSE active clients by June 2025.p.9
  • Discount brokers' share of active NSE clients expanded from 6–8% in FY15 to about 76–78% in FY25.p.9

Key insights

  1. Indian retail investing transitioned from telephone dealing desks and physical paperwork to smartphone applications in less than a decade.p.1
  2. Digital public goods including Aadhaar verification, e-signatures, DigiLocker, and UPI have substantially eliminated onboarding friction for retail investors.p.2
  3. Empirical adoption research shows that effort expectancy, performance expectancy, and perceived return drive intentions to use mobile trading apps, while perceived risk plays a weaker role.p.5
  4. Platform choice architecture and design features such as Zerodha's behavioral Nudges can successfully reduce high-risk trading volumes.p.8
  5. High platform engagement and user satisfaction metrics do not necessarily imply positive financial welfare or portfolio returns for retail investors.p.9
  6. Regulatory policy measures implemented between 2023 and 2025 reduced the number of unique individual traders in equity derivatives by about 20% year-on-year.p.9
  7. System outages and misleading communication on trading apps can quickly erode investor trust and lead to substantial regulatory enforcement penalties.p.10

Topics and entities

GlobalUSAI in financeBankingPaymentsRegulationWealthtechCDSLFINRAGrowwNSDLNSERobinhoodSEBISECZerodha

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