Groww is one of India's leading online investment platforms that allow investors to invest in stocks and mutual funds. Ever growing smartphone penetration coupled with cheap internet and rapid UPI adoption made the financial sector ripe for disruption. I believe 2017 was an inflection point (post demonetisation) for fintech startups in the country. If demonetisation was the first wave of progression for the Indian financial sector, then COVID-19 is definitely the second wave. Stock market investing, in particular, has become popular among people.
Today in this first edition of 'Understanding Nuances', we two bring you the deconstruction, teardown (whatever you may want to call it) for the Groww app. The purpose of this newsletter is particular, to make app consumption easier for people and update them on a regular basis about nuances and features, hence maximising app utility. So let's get going!
Let's start with onboarding.
Gone are the days where a person would go to the post office to courier their details to the broker. Demat account opening is now paperless and quick. The onboarding flow for Groww or any other online stock broker app is pretty much the same. There are some mandatory E-signs and verifications. For Groww flow looks like, signing up with email ID and mobile number > OTP verification > verifying PAN Card > bank details (Acc No. & IFSC) > verify bank details > accepting terms and conditions > income and family details > complete KYC, e-sign Aadhar > verify with OTP > NSDL E-sign > OTP confirmation.
Note that Groww doesn't ask for money during the onboarding process because it doesn't charge any platform fees or account opening fees like Zerodha or Paytm Money. Account opening is free, and that's a big plus for someone very new who has impulsively downloaded the app after watching the ‘stonk’ meme on Facebook. Apart from this, Groww's onboarding is pretty intuitive and straightforward. One of the things you will read in this piece is the repetitive use of the word 'simple', which is precisely the USP (Unique Selling Point) for Groww. UI is not the USP for investors, but it is an added advantage for user acquisitions in the Indian market.
Those who are reading this to learn - How to open a Demat account through Groww, sorry mate, but we won't write whole steps here. You can easily find assistance on account opening and other related FAQs online. You can refer here as well.
Now let’s talk about Groww’s user interface. What Groww app does more is give you less.
Ultra neat UI with three sections - Explore | Dashboard | You
Three options to invest - Stocks | Mutual Funds | Gold (Present below search tab).
One unified list for tracking stock prices & one for MF. (yeah, just one)
One Investment Bucket (wait, what?) - This is basically an option to buy one or more mutual funds at once, just like a shopping cart.
Overall platform from the start is very intuitive and easy to use. Even the language used is pretty simple, and abbreviations are hardly used anywhere, making Groww simple and easy to follow for beginners.
With UI done, let's discuss the app's features.
Fundamental metrics are pretty uncommon for people investing for the first time. Zerodha has its learning module called Varsity for learning purposes, but it's not natively built into the app. Groww, on the other hand, has everything built into its platform, not extensive as Varsity, but it provides a quick definition for metrics under 'understand fundamentals', 'performance' and 'analyst estimates' icons. I find this convenient for a use case where I don't want to leave the platform after getting intimidated by all the jargon, and I am too lazy to study them on some third party platform.
Explicitly talking about few features:
Social Sharing - Available on every stock listing where you can share the stock price listing page directly with friends on social media with a personalised referral link.
Charts - By default, they use standard graphs and not candlestick, which adds convenience for first-time users.
Buy Feature - This is a space where Groww needs to improve. User Journey until this step is just fine, but you will find an overly simplistic page with just three fields and very limited options. Consider the following three cases.
First Time User - For some users, the 'stock buy' page where they can place an order might be the drop-off point. I am talking of two possibilities.
(a) I leave this page because I feel uncomfortable investing my money in just one click with such a limited option. It's like I agree to something in Black/ White, 0/ 1. Also, I am not sure if this is the final step before the money will get deducted from my account.
(b) I am not aware of what the limit or market is. Groww helped me until this step with its assistive user-friendly UI, and now I am left all alone to mark all the important options.Experienced Trader - I need an advanced selling option, man! CNC, MIS, Creating GTT? Clearly not aligned with experienced/ advanced traders.
Intermediates - For someone like me (who lies somewhere between categories 1 & 2), this might actually work. I am aware of all the options. They are less and exactly what I want. I don't create GTT or customise my order whenever I want to invest. I take long positions on my stocks to compound my wealth over the years.
Adding Money - Super simple and convenient.
Watchlist - Once you have bought the stocks, you can watch them on the Dashboard section. Stock Dashboards are almost the same on all the platforms for investing apps. There might be some changes in how they present information, but the rest is usual stuff. But one thing at which Groww lets its users down is its watchlist. It's a unified, one size fits all watchlist. You cannot create multiple watchlists to track, and it sucks.
Pricing - One major difference between Groww and some other players is that Groww charges brokerage for equity delivery as well as for intra-day. Zerodha and Upstox are brokerages free for equity delivery. For detailed documentation of prices and other pros and cons, refer to this article.
This was all about stocks. We will cover MF and other components in some other editions. Investment space is just too large to cover in one go.
So now comes the judgement!
Use Case - Demat account opening and stock purchase.
Platform - Groww
Recommendation - Best if you are a beginner in stock market investment.
We know we did not cover everything related to the stock purchase and app, but believe us, it's pretty hard to cover everything in one newsletter. We will compare different attributes (UI, design, customer support, etc.) for the same vertical (finance, e-commerce, etc.) in different editions. We believe less is more, so taking one at a time.
We’ll be posting more such articles regularly, so don’t forget to subscribe to ‘Understanding Nuances’!