I have been using Zerodha for about 4 months now, and am quite happy with their platform. They have recently reduced their brokerage for delivery trades to zero! Find that hard to believe? So did I, when I got the message from them. Here are a few links to corroborate this:
https://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2015-12-01/news/68688560_1_zerodha-nithin-kamath-brokerage-revenue
https://zerodha.com/z-connect/zerodha/bulletin-latest-at-zerodha/zerodha-going-zero-brokerage
But there are no free lunches, so to speak. Let me break the whole deal down to a few pros and cons:
Pros:
One of the lowest brokerages all around.
A simple and fast platform.
The layout is really helpful in tracking all the stocks you want to. Being able to see them on the side at all times with them getting updated in real time is something I found to be quite helpful.
Their Varsity program which is quite good in case you want to read up about investing or trading concepts.
Their dashboard has useful links at the bottom page, taking you to informative Economic Times articles, which talk about global nightly news and daily trends.
Cons:
Be prepared for a long wait each time you call up their customer care people. And you will definitely need to call once in a while, if my experience is any indication.
The trades you do may sometimes not get updated on their platform. This will result in a mismatch between the platform(KITE) and the back office(which is called Q). You will definitely need to call them up to get it updated properly. Waiting and hoping that the system will eventually correct itself is not very beneficial.
The customer care executives do not have a set way to identify you. One time just the PAN card sufficed, another time they literally demanded the Z-Pin number(some number they provide you). So this mismatch is quite jarring and they were not ready to listen to the explanation that the previous time I called just the PAN was enough.
Their platform KITE does not support BSE trades yet. For example, if you want to buy SpiceJet(listed only in BSE) you cannot do it through KITE. It can apparently be done through their old platform, but I have not tried it.
If the folks at Zerodha sort out their customer service area and the minor technical glitches, I think they will go long and far indeed.
At the end of it, personally, the cons I mentioned are minor and the lower brokerage really makes up for all of them.
Whew, quite a long review! Thanks a lot for reading through all of that!