- Groww will focus on customer needs rather than mimic competitor strategies in brokerage and AI tools
- CEO Lalit Keshre emphasized building products from firsthand customer insights instead of following rivals
- No immediate change in brokerage rates announced, with value delivery prioritized over price cuts
Groww will continue to focus on customer needs rather than follow competitors' strategies. This is what CEO Lalit Keshre said after analysts asked how the broking platform plans to respond to rivals cutting brokerage charges and introducing AI-led tools.
During Groww-parent Billionbrains Garage Ventures' Q2FY27 post-earnings analyst call on Oct 14, Jefferies analyst Supratim Datta flagged the competitive landscape, noting that some discount brokers had reduced brokerage by half while others were offering AI-led tools. He followed by asking how Groww planned to protect its competitive position and retain customers.
Keshre said, "The moment you start following competition, then you get biased and start thinking like them." He added that Groww's approach was to build using "firsthand insights about the customer".
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On pricing, Keshre said the company believed customers would be happy if it delivered more value than it charged for. However, he did not announce a change in brokerage rates or commit to a specific pricing response to competitors.
Keshre added that AI tools are part of that customer-focused approach, and that Groww has added features intended to help customers make decisions, while using AI to develop products faster, improve product quality and enhance the overall customer experience. He also described revenue growth as a consequence of improving the customer experience, rather than the starting point.
The company is also building its own AI technology stack. During the call, Keshre said this would reduce its cost per token, adding that using external commercial models for all its requirements would have made costs much higher given the volume of tokens it consumes.
This comes after AI investment contributed to higher operating costs during the quarter. Chief Financial Officer Ishan Bansal said Groww's cost to serve increased because of AI-related expenses and higher compute usage. More trading days in the previous quarter also affected costs, while a one-time operational issue involving delayed files on an expiry date resulted in a hit of around Rs 10 crore to Rs 13 crore.
Groww is additionally taking a gradual approach to new products. Keshre said its US stocks offering was still in the early testing stage and had received positive customer feedback. The company had not fixed a timeline for a full launch, saying it would continue to gather feedback and make changes as it expanded access.
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