Nithin Kamath is the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Zerodha. He began trading stocks when he was introduced to the markets by his friends at just 17. He started trading in penny stocks. He had accumulated quite a bit of money by the time he finished his engineering degree from the Bangalore Institute of Technology. He then lost it all - Rs 5 lakh - between 2001 and 2002 when the markets crashed. Undeterred, he began working at a call center during the night while he traded stocks in the day to build up his trading capital. This went on for a couple of years until he met an American HNI who gave him a cheque and asked Nithin to manage his money. Eventually, he started his brokerage Kamath & Associates and became a sub-broker for Reliance Money in 2006. Nithin bootstrapped and founded Zerodha in 2010 to overcome the hurdles he faced during his decade-long stint as a trader. Today, Zerodha has changed the landscape of the Indian broking industry. He is a member of the SEBI Secondary Market Advisory Committee (SMAC) and the Market Data Advisory Committee (MDAC). He loves to play basketball.