I think the best demat account is that whose trading platforms, brokerage and other charges, customer services suite your requirements. That’s why a customer likes Angel Broking/SMC/Karvy but the other is happy with Motilal Oswal/Geojit/Sharekhan while some are happy with 3-in-one accounts provided by their banks like ICICI, Kotak, SBI, HDFC, Canara, etc. There is another category of Demat providers who are called discount brokers. Zerodha, Fyers, Samco, SAS Online, Upstox, 5paisa[dot]com and many more are in this category. They are mainly online trading companies who provide good trading platforms at low brokerage. Many customers have been trading and investing on their platforms.
So, every trader and investor has his/her own priorities. Many clients like to keep more than one demat accounts to get the best of their facilities.
So, every trader and investor has his/her own priorities. Many clients like to keep more than one demat accounts to get the best of their facilities.
Indian stock market is still dominated by the full service brokers who provide their customers various facilities of investments like trading, investing in MFs, booking IPOs, insurances, etc. Besides, they provide research tips/calls for buying and selling stocks. They have infrastructural set up in their offices across the country to enable their customers to visit and place their trade. They have mobile platforms for customers also. They have call and trade facility too. They provide margin on interest also. For all these services they have various packages and rates of charges. Some of them have minimum opening balance policy.
One can open Demat account with any of the broking firms mentioned above by visiting their nearby offices physically or by signing up on their websites online.
Zerodha may be one of the best demat account providers to trade with in India. They introduced discount broking in India in 2010. They have nearly 4 lakh clients now. They are one of the most cost efficient and fastest today.
- They charge Zero for Delivery and
- 0.01% or Rs 20/- whichever is lower per executed order for Intraday trades across BSE, NSE and MCX.
They don't provide you research tips, rather they have education initiatives like
- Varsity: This platform is intended to provide you knowledge related to all aspects of stock market investments like Basics of Equity, Commodity, Currency, Futures & Options, Fundamental and Technical Analysis, Trading Psychology & Risk Management and Taxation.
- TradingQnA: This is an interactive platform for clients' queries regarding any type of clarification and information shared among expert and knowledgeable clients and from the top officials of the company.
- Z-connect is for updates under Zerodha.
- Pulse for Market updates.
- Besides, their customer care team are there for clarification of their customers by phone calls in multi languages and emails across the country.
Platforms:
Pi for Desktop : This is trading platform with versatile facilities like
- Pi has 10 different types of charts, 80 built-in technical indicators and over 30 drawing tools for annotation. One can trade directly off charts with a single click or by drawing target lines.
- There are facilities for Algos, strategies, and back testing.
- You can Code advanced strategies with a simple yet powerful scripting language.
- You can use the free historical data to backtest your strategies.
- Very advanced pattern recognition equipment is there. You can draw a pattern on screen and Pi looks for it in charts.
- You get 50,000 candles worth of FREE historical data on Stocks, Indices, F&O, Currency, and Commodity. You can stack your data in charts side by side with dockable views.
- True streaming quotes over the web, Facebook-like realtime trade alerts and notifications,and work on mobile and tablet screens.
- Kite is a minimalistic, intuitive, responsive, light, yet powerful web and mobile trading application offered by Zerodha.
- The Bandwidth consumption is of less than 0.5 Kbps for a full marketwatch.
- It has also facility of extensive charting with over 100 indicators and 6 chart types, advanced order types like Brackets and cover, millisecond order placements, and more.
As a beginner, one may go for investing in Mutual Fund. Zerodha have a platform called Coin that lets you buy mutual funds online directly from asset management companies/fund houses and completely commission free. It’s good for you if you wish to go for recurring investment. They charge you Nil for investment upto Rs 25,000/- and for any amount more than 25k you have to pay flat Rs 50/-per month. This is very cost effective for an investor. By investing through Coin, you get facility of
- Choose your MF from the 2000 odd alternatives
- Purchase directly from Asset Management Companies/Fund Houses
- No upfront & trail commissions (one has to pay if purchased from a distributors)
- Keep in your Demat maintained by CDSL securely
- Since MFs are in Demat one can pledge and take loan in emergency
- Keep all investments in equity, currency, MFs at a single place
- Easy SIP, start, modify and stop as and when you think
- Track NAV, purchase and redeem funds as per NAV
- Watch Profit & Loss
- Get Single capital gain statement; Easy for taxation
- Easy Nomination procedure
Zerodha charges Rs 500/- [Rs 300/- for Demat & Equity and Rs 200/- for Commodity] for opening account.
NB: Those who have already a Demat account or invested in MFs, opening account with Zerodha is very easy as they are KYC compliant. They can do it instantly with Aadhar: