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n a post on X, Kamath said Zerodha had originally launched the referral programme when the company had little money to spend on advertising or customer acquisition. When we were starting Zerodha, we didn't have any money to spend on advertising or customer acquisition. So the only real growth lever we had was word of mouth, he wrote.Under the programme, clients who referred new users received 10% of the brokerage generated by those referrals for as long as the referred customers continued trading on the platform.According to Kamath, the initiative played a significant role in helping Zerodha scale. Before the programme was discontinued in 2024 because of exchange regulations, nearly 30% of the brokerage's accounts were being acquired through referrals.However, he said the true impact of word-of-mouth recommendations was likely much larger. Most people don't log in to a referral portal or share a referral link. They simply tell a friend, colleague, or family member: 'You should open an account with Zerodha. I use it and like it,' Kamath said.As a result, many customers joined directly through the company's website without any recorded referral attribution. While the attributed referral number was around 30%, the real number was probably well north of 50%, he added.Even after referral incentives were discontinued in 2024, Zerodha continued to see a steady stream of customers through recommendations from existing users.Kamath said 15-20% of new accounts continued to originate from referrals despite the absence of any monetary incentive. That, for us, has always been the biggest validation, he said.The brokerage has now decided to reinstate referral benefits not only for new referrals but also for customers who had previously referred users before the programme was halted. This means that anyone who has ever referred clients to Zerodha will get 10% of the brokerage generated by those referrals for as long as they trade with us, Kamath said.The announcement comes at a time when customer acquisition costs have become a key focus area across India's online brokerage industry. Many fintech and brokerage platforms have spent heavily on advertising, sponsorships and digital marketing campaigns to attract retail investors over the past few years.Zerodha, in contrast, has often highlighted its reliance on organic growth and customer recommendations. The company has built one of India's largest retail broking businesses without raising external venture capital funding.Kamath also used the opportunity to highlight Zerodha's pricing model, noting that the platform does not charge investors for delivery-based stock investments, exchange-traded funds, bonds and direct mutual funds. Given that we don't charge for investing in stocks, ETFs, bonds and direct mutual funds, and given that AMC is free or nearly zero for most customers under BSDA, there's no reason for you not to refer someone who wants to start saving and investing, he wrote.