Dale Vaz spent years building the technology behind one of India's most successful food delivery apps. Now he's betting that same engineering rigor can crack a far more turbulent market: retail stock trading.
Sahi, the brokerage platform Vaz launched after leaving Swiggy, announced on April 29 that it has raised $33 million in Series B funding, pushing its valuation to around $200 million. That's roughly triple what the company was worth just ten months ago, when it closed a $10.5 million Series A at a $60 million valuation last June.
The math reflects what appears to be genuine traction in a sector littered with well-funded competitors. Accel Growth led the round with a $20 million check, joined by earlier backers Elevation Capital and Accel India. The firms are wagering that Sahi's technology-first approach—what investors describe as an "AI-native" brokerage model—can carve out meaningful share in India's sprawling but unevenly profitable retail trading ecosystem.
Since launching full operations in January 2025, Sahi has processed over 130 million trades and opened approximately 400,000 demat accounts, the company said. Trade volumes jumped 24-fold between April 2025 and March this year; active traders climbed nineteen-fold over the same stretch. The platform recently crossed one million trades per day, Vaz told The Economic Times—a milestone that arrives faster than perhaps even the founders expected.
Building in a Crowded Field
Sahi operates as a SEBI-registered broker offering equities and derivatives trading through what it calls a "chart-native" interface, built entirely on proprietary tech. The pricing is straightforward: Rs 10 per trade, flat. Last month the company added 13 technical indicators to its charting suite, a nod to the retail day-traders who form the backbone of India's increasingly active—and occasionally frothy—equity markets.
But Sahi is entering a sector where the contours of competition are already well-defined. Zerodha remains the profit king, minting consistent cash flows while most rivals chase growth over margins. Groww, which went public domestically in 2025, now commands the largest active client base. And in October, competitor Dhan raised $120 million at a $1.2 billion valuation, crossing into unicorn territory.
The broader market offers both opportunity and caution. India's National Stock Exchange counted more than 130 million registered investors as of late April 2026, with total demat accounts across depositories surpassing 225 million in March. Yet active participation has cooled somewhat—down from a peak near 49.2 million in FY25 to roughly 45.7 million by the close of FY26, according to industry analyses. Retail enthusiasm, it seems, is cyclical.
Regulatory headwinds add another layer of complexity. SEBI tightened surveillance norms for derivatives markets late last year, responding to studies showing that nine out of ten retail futures-and-options traders lost money in FY24 and FY25. The crackdown hasn't killed activity, but it has injected a note of caution into a once-exuberant corner of the market.
Expanding the Product Map
The fresh capital will fund what Sahi describes as a push into deeper AI infrastructure and broader product categories. Margin trade funding, commodities trading, and mutual funds are all on the roadmap, expanding beyond the platform's current equities and F&O offerings. Whether that diversification can translate into sustainable profitability—always the tricky part for brokerages chasing scale—remains an open question.
"The pace of product releases and the depth of customer workflows they've built is remarkable," said Vaas Bhaskar of Elevation Capital. Accel's Manasi Shah echoed the sentiment, pointing to Sahi's "AI-native brokerage approach" as a differentiator worth backing.
The company has now raised over $43 million since its seed round in September 2023. The challenge ahead is converting a technology-first thesis into durable market share—particularly in a landscape where brand loyalty is thin and switching costs are low. Vaz and his team are betting that better tools, not just lower fees, can pull traders away from entrenched rivals.
For now, at least, the investors seem convinced. Whether retail traders follow suit will determine if this valuation jump proves prescient or premature.
