Zerodha - Number One Discount Broker in India
- Thread starter Traderji
- Start date
Had one of the traderji members request me answer, hence obliging.
Yes, it might seem like we are trying to do many things, but let me clarify that a lot of these things are through startups working with their own teams at rainmatter.
Our focus is on keeping Zerodha the best execution platform. There is no excuse if our platform is down even for 1 min, but one of the reasons for us facing these issues is because we are trying to constantly do something new to improve. Our support infra/vendor doesn't really work like us and hence the drop in experience. If we were just using NEST offered by Omnesys, the entire eco-system would have been standstill, Pi and Kite for whatever it is worth wouldn't have happened. We wouldn't have had other brokers forced to think of innovating on the trading experience.
Being first the risk is always higher, but so are the rewards. We forced Omnesys (now Thomson reuters) to open up API's which were earlier privilege of only the algo trading crowd. Both Kite and PI use these API's for execution management. Today you are seeing others take the same route as well, because let us be honest, there is no way a business will be able to scale using the same old NEST platform.
Kite as a platform hasn't had even a single issue till date. Whatever issues we have had is because of these API's, which were never really built meant for retail trading platforms. Over the last two years, we have constantly gotten TR to improve these API's. But I guess as you all know, it is still some distance away from perfection.
Pi being a desktop application is a lot harder to support. Also since there was code from modulus which was the base for Pi, there is legacy it carries, a technical debt. Pi had issues initially but over last 1 year, again the issues were around API's.
Kite is built/maintained by our in-house team, whereas PI is built by tradelab. Why some indicators show up on Kite and not on Pi is because we used different charting libraries built by different companies. Tradelab is constantly working on improving Pi, not a lot of work shows up as change in skin, so it might seem to a client that nothing is happening.
We also rely on TR (first harsaIT/then Omnesys/now TR) for our backoffice operations, yes the same guys who have built a program that works only on ie. We have built Q/Quant as skin over it, but since we still rely on the old BO for processes, the experience hasn't been great. The good news on this front is that in the next 4 to 5 months you will get a reporting platform like never before in India. Something which doesn't have any external dependency, where if we screw up, I can say yeah we screwed up.
Like already mentioned by our team member, there is no option to switch from TR. We are seeing improvement in the way their team responds to situations. We are doing whatever possible to ensure issues don't arise.
You might hear a lot of news from Rainmatter (which press reports as Zerodha), but we have only two things on our mind right now, Kite and the new reporting platform. Tradelab is constantly working on improving Pi.
Yes, it might seem like we are trying to do many things, but let me clarify that a lot of these things are through startups working with their own teams at rainmatter.
Our focus is on keeping Zerodha the best execution platform. There is no excuse if our platform is down even for 1 min, but one of the reasons for us facing these issues is because we are trying to constantly do something new to improve. Our support infra/vendor doesn't really work like us and hence the drop in experience. If we were just using NEST offered by Omnesys, the entire eco-system would have been standstill, Pi and Kite for whatever it is worth wouldn't have happened. We wouldn't have had other brokers forced to think of innovating on the trading experience.
Being first the risk is always higher, but so are the rewards. We forced Omnesys (now Thomson reuters) to open up API's which were earlier privilege of only the algo trading crowd. Both Kite and PI use these API's for execution management. Today you are seeing others take the same route as well, because let us be honest, there is no way a business will be able to scale using the same old NEST platform.
Kite as a platform hasn't had even a single issue till date. Whatever issues we have had is because of these API's, which were never really built meant for retail trading platforms. Over the last two years, we have constantly gotten TR to improve these API's. But I guess as you all know, it is still some distance away from perfection.
Pi being a desktop application is a lot harder to support. Also since there was code from modulus which was the base for Pi, there is legacy it carries, a technical debt. Pi had issues initially but over last 1 year, again the issues were around API's.
Kite is built/maintained by our in-house team, whereas PI is built by tradelab. Why some indicators show up on Kite and not on Pi is because we used different charting libraries built by different companies. Tradelab is constantly working on improving Pi, not a lot of work shows up as change in skin, so it might seem to a client that nothing is happening.
We also rely on TR (first harsaIT/then Omnesys/now TR) for our backoffice operations, yes the same guys who have built a program that works only on ie. We have built Q/Quant as skin over it, but since we still rely on the old BO for processes, the experience hasn't been great. The good news on this front is that in the next 4 to 5 months you will get a reporting platform like never before in India. Something which doesn't have any external dependency, where if we screw up, I can say yeah we screwed up.
Like already mentioned by our team member, there is no option to switch from TR. We are seeing improvement in the way their team responds to situations. We are doing whatever possible to ensure issues don't arise.
You might hear a lot of news from Rainmatter (which press reports as Zerodha), but we have only two things on our mind right now, Kite and the new reporting platform. Tradelab is constantly working on improving Pi.
With so many different vendors by Zerodha, obviously, Zerodha's job is only collection of "BROKERAGE", the rest is someone else's or everyone else's fault :lol::lol::lol:
:clap: Now thats called discount brokerage !!! :clap:
Reliability is discounted as well .. not just the brokerage cost :clapping:
:clap: Now thats called discount brokerage !!! :clap:
Reliability is discounted as well .. not just the brokerage cost :clapping:
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i suppose even Maruti Suzuki has so many vendors supplying different parts so that a complete car can be made. In the same way Zerodha is also working with many vendors. Prob is that somehow vendors are not working as expected, tarnishing the reputation of Zerodha and troubling the clients. 
hope the issues resolve soon. !
hope the issues resolve soon. !
Well frankly speaking, I am with you for last six years I suppose & I can tell you that you have done a great job.
Thanks a lot.
Bt please keep your downtime in kite as low as possible. That is my genuine request. Make sure that it is not down just for a minute also for next one month.
I like the KITE most as it can be used from any where (mac, iphone, ipad and windows also along with chart).
Thanks a lot.
Bt please keep your downtime in kite as low as possible. That is my genuine request. Make sure that it is not down just for a minute also for next one month.
I like the KITE most as it can be used from any where (mac, iphone, ipad and windows also along with chart).
All these could have been avoided by small steps,
1.The problems arise when you introduce any new updates.While I agree that bugs can happen to any new update- why don't you maintain two different versions at any given time.
For example if you introduce updates for version 1.01 before going on with 1.02,but maintain 1.01 while mass beta testing for version 1.02 can go on with specific disclaimer that the platform is unstable.Maintaining beta and stable would have saved a lot of complain and explaining.
2.Secondly in the last case whole Sunday I was not able to login due to license error.So I am assuming that testing was going on from Sunday.In that case please please send an email or sms that next day or two can be problematic so trade cautiously.People will trade less that day but will complain less and consequently your image won't be tarnished.
3.We live in India.We all understand nothing works here and out of blue many things go wrong.But the trick is telling the Customers that problems have arisen as quickly as possible.A mass sms or email within 5-10 mins explaining situation would have been great.
Heck if Zerodha keeps a dedicated twitter account then a simple tweet would have been enough. A push notification.....anything!!!
4.Many traders who takes trading professionally heavily uses platform like Pi.A dedicated platform can offer a lot of modifications and add-ons than web based platform.We can write scripts/codes for a dedicated platform.So,professional traders will favour Pi like platforms.What irks me is not that Pi is still buggy but simple things which should have been present are not.
You guys have put a lot of things into Pi but taken in isolation we can't actually use anything.For example last i checked we can't back test more than 90 days data.(so can't rely on back test much)
The back test result is highly confusing.(topic to discuss in separate post)
Neural Networks and all that jazz - but not really sure what to do with half of them.
It feels like someone wanted to do lot of cool things with Pi but after few months just gave up and moved onto better things.
Can I do backtest with Kite?? What do you think? Can I write scripts? Put expert-advisors( let's not even go there) into Kite??
Kite is nice but Zerodha must decide which platform they wanted us to use - Pi or Kite.Because purists/professionals will study one platform and they want to modify it to their own preference and stick to it.
4.This is the most important part.
I have absolutely no idea what sort of arrangements you have with your Infra/backend/TR.But it feels like they can willy nilly introduce modifications without giving a prior thought to consequences in case of failure.From a contractual/legal stand point this position is untenable so Zerodha must redraft clauses which must protect/compensate in case of failures which are not due to Zerodha but third party.
Because trading involves money even a small outage can wipe out peoples savings.Please Please think about this aspect again.
I ended up getting a demat account last month as I see trading with Zerodha a long term venture.But unless you can sort out the third party mess people will get scared.....today or tomorrow.
By the way thanks for replying.
:thumb:
1.The problems arise when you introduce any new updates.While I agree that bugs can happen to any new update- why don't you maintain two different versions at any given time.
For example if you introduce updates for version 1.01 before going on with 1.02,but maintain 1.01 while mass beta testing for version 1.02 can go on with specific disclaimer that the platform is unstable.Maintaining beta and stable would have saved a lot of complain and explaining.
2.Secondly in the last case whole Sunday I was not able to login due to license error.So I am assuming that testing was going on from Sunday.In that case please please send an email or sms that next day or two can be problematic so trade cautiously.People will trade less that day but will complain less and consequently your image won't be tarnished.
3.We live in India.We all understand nothing works here and out of blue many things go wrong.But the trick is telling the Customers that problems have arisen as quickly as possible.A mass sms or email within 5-10 mins explaining situation would have been great.
Heck if Zerodha keeps a dedicated twitter account then a simple tweet would have been enough. A push notification.....anything!!!
4.Many traders who takes trading professionally heavily uses platform like Pi.A dedicated platform can offer a lot of modifications and add-ons than web based platform.We can write scripts/codes for a dedicated platform.So,professional traders will favour Pi like platforms.What irks me is not that Pi is still buggy but simple things which should have been present are not.
You guys have put a lot of things into Pi but taken in isolation we can't actually use anything.For example last i checked we can't back test more than 90 days data.(so can't rely on back test much)
The back test result is highly confusing.(topic to discuss in separate post)
Neural Networks and all that jazz - but not really sure what to do with half of them.
It feels like someone wanted to do lot of cool things with Pi but after few months just gave up and moved onto better things.
Can I do backtest with Kite?? What do you think? Can I write scripts? Put expert-advisors( let's not even go there) into Kite??
Kite is nice but Zerodha must decide which platform they wanted us to use - Pi or Kite.Because purists/professionals will study one platform and they want to modify it to their own preference and stick to it.
4.This is the most important part.
I have absolutely no idea what sort of arrangements you have with your Infra/backend/TR.But it feels like they can willy nilly introduce modifications without giving a prior thought to consequences in case of failure.From a contractual/legal stand point this position is untenable so Zerodha must redraft clauses which must protect/compensate in case of failures which are not due to Zerodha but third party.
Because trading involves money even a small outage can wipe out peoples savings.Please Please think about this aspect again.
I ended up getting a demat account last month as I see trading with Zerodha a long term venture.But unless you can sort out the third party mess people will get scared.....today or tomorrow.
By the way thanks for replying.
:thumb:
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That's how we do it. The licensing bit was introduced on our entire setup. We spotted it on Sunday, followed up had it fixed by increasing the license by an exponentially large number. Everything got fixed, only to break after 10000 clients logged in.
Yes, this something we can definitely improve on. When there is panic, we freeze. We have now setup a team that is going to work completely independently from our operations team, just for client communication.
If you are someone who codes/backtests, you have to check out: https://kite.trade/docs/connect/v1/. and this https://kite.trade/forum/. It costs, but more than worth with what you can do with it.
These third party issues are existing in India for everyone. Horrible data centers, leased lines that dont' really work the way they should, restrictions on data on these lines, vendors managing various pieces and many more, we are just open talking about it. We are slowly trying to move everything in-house. Also about the TR bit, now that they are a brand called Thomson Reuters and not Omnesys anymore, they have a brand reputation to lose. So it has been made very clear to them that if they bring us disrepute, we are going to do the same to their brand as well. So yeah, let us see how that goes. They have put additional dedicated resources to ensure such issues don't happen again.
I was just going through some of the comments on traderji, one thing I can tell you for sure, I remember 6 years back when we started the business, before lakhs of comments on this thread, people doubted if we can stay committed. If anything, we are more committed and working harder than ever before to offer the best trading experience. If you visit our office in Blore, you will see us all working for the love of surprising our clients with new things rather with any revenue targets. Some of the boys last week sat together the whole night to build the pulse chrome extension, just to make life easier for people who read news, which brings us no revenues. We had our biggest award - ET startup of the year 2016 on monday, which we couldn't celebrate because of this. What I am trying to tell is that, these incidents hurt us more than anyone else. We are trying our best to ensure such things don't happen.
Yes, this something we can definitely improve on. When there is panic, we freeze. We have now setup a team that is going to work completely independently from our operations team, just for client communication.
If you are someone who codes/backtests, you have to check out: https://kite.trade/docs/connect/v1/. and this https://kite.trade/forum/. It costs, but more than worth with what you can do with it.
These third party issues are existing in India for everyone. Horrible data centers, leased lines that dont' really work the way they should, restrictions on data on these lines, vendors managing various pieces and many more, we are just open talking about it. We are slowly trying to move everything in-house. Also about the TR bit, now that they are a brand called Thomson Reuters and not Omnesys anymore, they have a brand reputation to lose. So it has been made very clear to them that if they bring us disrepute, we are going to do the same to their brand as well. So yeah, let us see how that goes. They have put additional dedicated resources to ensure such issues don't happen again.
I was just going through some of the comments on traderji, one thing I can tell you for sure, I remember 6 years back when we started the business, before lakhs of comments on this thread, people doubted if we can stay committed. If anything, we are more committed and working harder than ever before to offer the best trading experience. If you visit our office in Blore, you will see us all working for the love of surprising our clients with new things rather with any revenue targets. Some of the boys last week sat together the whole night to build the pulse chrome extension, just to make life easier for people who read news, which brings us no revenues. We had our biggest award - ET startup of the year 2016 on monday, which we couldn't celebrate because of this. What I am trying to tell is that, these incidents hurt us more than anyone else. We are trying our best to ensure such things don't happen.
