Who is a Zerodha AP, Zerodha Associate Partner?

Zerodha Associate Partners are people who sign up to be a part of Zerodha’s marketing team. Associate Partners solicit clients to start trading or Investing in India through Zerodha.  Zerodha will pay you a percentage of the brokerage generated as your commission for your referrals.

How much does the Zerodha AP’s get paid as referral commission?

For AP’s, the referral commission slab starts at 20 percentage of the brokerage revenue generated. The slabs will be allotted to you on the amount of brokerage revenue you generate for Zerodha. The more brokerage your referrals pay. a higher percentage of commission you earn. The commission slab can go up from 20 percentage to more than 50 percentage.

Do I get paid referral commission for the small case and coin platforms?

Referral commissions are paid only if your referred client pays Intraday Trading brokerage (not including any fixed monthly brokerage structure or Demat charges). Small Case is a Brokerage Free Delivery trade for Zerodha. The Small case charges you pay goes to a third company. The logic behind MF Platforms like coin is to cut out the middlemen, so no commission on that either.

How to sign up as Zerodha Associate Partner?

Majority of the Zerodha Associated Partners are signed up by invitation to join. If you are currently making an impact on YouTube or on your blog. Zerodha will zero you in and request you to sign up. If you are not invited, you can still sign up if you contact the Zerodha Marketing team on 080 4040 2020.

What documents are required to sign up as a Zerodha Associate Partner?

Signing up as Zerodha Associate Partner is a legally binding contract and a position that needs to be taken with pride.

It comes with responsibilities and requires you to follow a dutiful code of conduct.

Your behaviour in the community now represents Zerodha’s reputation, Goodwill and trust of people deciding to invest through Zerodha.

At the time of Signing Up, you are requested to send a copy of your Government issued identity card, your bank statement and digitally sign up to their terms and conditions.

This is not a role that you can sign up, scam the investors with Zerodha’s AP title and then go on the run.

How easy is it to sign up as a Zerodha Associate partner?

If you can furnish copies of the above documents, it is very easy to sign up as a Zerodha Associate partner at the moment.

The AP account gets activated in a couple of days. Anyone can easily sign up.

In the coming years, there is a good chance Zerodha will start profiling who they sign up or dismiss underperforming AP’s. So, If you are really dedicated to what you do, book your tickets before the train gets full.

Should you sign up as a Zerodha Associate Partner?

If you are confident of generating sufficient leads through social media, you should go for it. However, if you are only planning to make your unsuspecting daddy, mummy, aunties, uncles and friends referred under your account and earn a cut on their expense, it might not work out.

To see how much you can perform as a Zerodha Associate Partner, you can start with regular referral links.

You can generate your clubcard points referral link here: https://zerodha.com/associates

Do you earn Zerodha Referral commission for every client you refer and open Account?

The referral commission is paid only on the brokerage revenue generated. Referral commission is not paid on demat charges, account opening fees, investing etc . If you are willing to ride your scooter up and down the country in the hot sun to collect new sign up forms, you get paid 100 Rupees extra for that.

To earn money from Zerodha referral commission, you need to sign up active day traders. The richer your referred client, the more chance of you tapping into their wealth.

How Much can a Zerodha Associate Partner earn through commission?

An entry level AP with 5 – 10 YouTube videos can see the referral commission of 1000+ a month after the first 3 months.

Like any other Multi-Level Marketing, the AP’s who signed up first will be the people who had benefited more from such schemes. They had the opportunity to supply to a wider audience, long term full time intraday traders and rich pockets when the number of AP’s were less. Top level AP’s are currently earning more than 1,00,000 + a month in referral brokerage commission.

The latest Stock Market GURU’s that appeared on YouTube in less than 2 years are earning between 5-20k a month.

What are the challenges as a brokerage house Associate Partner?

You get a commission only if any brokerage fee is generated through your referred clients. With long term investments being brokerage free with most of the brokers, you need to count on your referred leads doing intraday trading. The CHURN rate of intraday clients for a brokerage business is very high, so it does not matter how many daytraders you sign up, 80 percentage of the daytraders you referred will quit. Your challenge will be to keep signing up new daytraders every day as possible to keep generating any regular brokerage commission income.

To build a sustainable income out of this, you need to keep your Referral Rate higher than your Churn rate. If not, you will eventually lose interest as an Associate Partner. Deciding to be a full time sign-up commission agent for any stock broker is not a sustainable way of earning a decent living.

What is the catch? / risks of being a Marketing Agent for any Stock Broker in India?

There are some common catches with all stock broker referral mapping  process in India.

1. Once the leads are generated through your deployed online referral links, rest of the sign up process is carried out manually through the broker’s own employees at their back office. In reality, with multiple brokers, I have experienced only less than 10 percent of the leads generated get mapped under your account. You cannot trust such a workforce to map the leads you have generated online directly under your account. For this reason, recently you will find, many of the Stock Broker AP’s are now forcing new leads to manually do a offline sign up application process directly through them. Just to make sure the mapping is not tampered with.
2. The biggest disappointment is when the broker wakes up one morning and decides to discontinue all their prior Commission pay off agreement and plans to now distribute samosas and tea or virtual points as commission instead of real money. All the hard work, a Marketing Partner for any stock broker invests into a supposedly long term broker and agent relationship lies at the mercy of the broker who is disbursing the commission. The associate partners having no rights in this broker and agent agreement.
3. After they use you to make all your friends, family and followers signup, gradually they start messing around with your commission payment, like delaying your commission withdrawal requests, not fully crediting the signup revenue, showing the new by-laws etc, etc. They intentionally create all the inconvenience to mess you around and get rid of you. Sooner or Later, it ends up as a disappointment for the Stock broker AP’s in most cases.

What is the future of Brokerage Associate Partners in India?

Recently in India, year on year majority of the brokers are going brokerage free for daytrading or shifting to fixed brokerage structure.

Eventually, all the existing brokers will be forced by market economics to stop charging brokerage and continue to provide their service for free.

The brokers will continue to exist by adopting fixed revenue models. No brokerage charged, No referral commission paid to Associate Partners.

 

April 25, 2018. Important Update to Zerodha Associate Partner Program.

The following update was published on Zerodha’s website on April 25, 2018.

Please contact your Sign Up manager for further information.

 

Effective February 2020, upstox decides to discontinue their prior brokerage-sharing arrangement on short notice.