Zerodha hired only 5 employees for its tech team in 4 years?

Zerodha's tech team has grown by just five members in four years, prioritizing collaboration and culture over expansion.

Zerodha has just brought in five new employees for its tech team in the past four years, its Chief Technology Officer Kailash Nadh said. This is because the company is focusing on maintaining a close-knit, collaborative work environment over rapid expansion. Talking to Moneycontrol, Kailash Nath said, “We’ve hired about 5 people in the tech team in the last 4 years in total, with 3 in the last year. The total strength is now 35 members in the tech team.”

Zerodha has hired five new tech employees in four years, focusing on a collaborative environment rather than rapid growth. CTO Kailash Nadh believes smaller teams can effectively scale, countering the trend of large tech team expansions in the industry.

Zerodha does not even use the word talent as the company “is a group of people who hang out with each other, who have the right philosophies, who gel well with each other”, he said, adding that the company’s culture focuses on human decency and building relationships.

He said that companies start hiring “like crazy” because that becomes a de facto growth metric but “software teams used to be lean 10-15 years ago. Startups did not have the tendency to hire hundreds of programmers."

He explained, “I think it is a misconception that the number of people in a tech or engineering team scales linearly with the organisation in terms of financial transactions or the number of users or revenue. It is absolutely possible for a really small team to build massive systems that scale to really massive numbers. For me, if an engineering team grows exponentially as the company and its business grows, that is a bit of an anomaly.”