Startup Deep Dive : Sensibull — revenue fell 28.7% in FY25 even as Zerodha pays to keep it free

Sensibull’s revenue fell 28.7% in FY25, from Rs 39.8 crore ($4.1 million) to Rs 28.4 crore, and its profit collapsed by roughly 96% to just Rs 47.9 lakh, according to Inc42 Datalabs’ reading of its regulatory filings. Yet by its own account the platform is used by hundreds of thousands of traders a month, and for the largest single chunk of them, Sensibull has never charged a rupee.

That is the contradiction sitting at the centre of this company. Sensibull is not a broker, does not touch client money, and openly says that its biggest distribution partner pays its bills so that the platform can stay free for that partner’s customers. The business is not struggling to find users. It is struggling with something else entirely: a regulator that spent 2024 and 2025 tightening the exact market — retail options trading — that Sensibull exists to serve. This piece traces how a failed 2013 startup, revived in 2017 on a shoestring cheque from Zerodha’s investment arm, became “India’s largest options trading platform,” and why its fortunes are now tied so closely to what SEBI does next.

Quick facts

What they do

Sensibull builds the analytics and strategy layer that sits on top of a stockbroker’s trading account. A user logs in through their existing broker — Zerodha, Angel One, Upstox or ICICI Direct — and Sensibull overlays option-chain data, Greeks, open-interest charts, ready-made multi-leg strategies and a payoff calculator, then routes the actual order back through that broker. It does not hold client funds, does not act as a broker itself, and is registered with SEBI as a Research Analyst (registration INH200006895), which is what lets it publish ready-made strategies rather than just raw data, as stated on its own site.

The origin

Abid Hassan’s route into Sensibull ran through the derivatives desks of STCI, ICICI and IIFL, where he traded options professionally before doing an MBA at IIM Ahmedabad and later sitting on a SEBI committee on hedge funds, according to his profile on The Org and Sensibull’s own about page. That trading-desk experience shaped the founding insight: most retail traders who lose money in options are not undisciplined, they simply have no tools to see the trade-off they are making. Zerodha’s own account of the company’s founding, published on its Z-Connect blog in August 2018, frames the ambition bluntly — building a platform “with the absurdly impossible vision of making the small guy win against the big guy in financial markets” by turning options from something bought like a lottery ticket into something structured around a visible strategy and payoff.

The struggle years

The Sensibull that exists today is not Hassan’s first attempt at the idea. Ministry of Corporate Affairs records show a company called Sensibull Financial Services Private Limited was incorporated on 29 April 2013 with Hassan as a director — and that entity was later struck off the register, according to filings aggregated by Tofler and TheCompanyCheck. Reporting from YourStory describes this as Hassan’s first attempt at the business in 2013, which ran into a regulatory roadblock; he shelved it and went back to trading options for a desk before trying again.

The second attempt, launched in August 2017 under a new entity, Riskilla Software Technologies, found capital in a way few Indian fintechs do: it took a single cheque of Rs 2.5 crore from Rainmatter, Zerodha’s investment arm, in August 2018, reported at the time by Entrackr, YourStory and The News Minute, and never went out to raise a conventional venture round after that. For a company competing against venture-funded rivals, that meant years of building on a shoestring rather than a war chest. The next real crisis was not financial but structural: by 2023, Sensibull’s roughly Rs 7,000-a-year subscription model was creating exactly the incentive problem Hassan had set out to fix — a platform meant to make trading safer had a revenue line that depended on customers trading (and paying) more.

The turning point

On one side of the turning point: a paid product, roughly Rs 7,000 a year for the Pro plan, and about 200,000 monthly active users, as stated by Zerodha founder Nithin Kamath in a Z-Connect post dated 24 July 2023. On the other side, from that same announcement: Sensibull would become free for every Zerodha customer, with Zerodha itself picking up the cost. Kamath’s stated reasoning was direct — a subscription business creates “unpredictability in subscription revenues” and pressure to nudge customers toward more trading to protect that revenue, which is the opposite of what an options-education tool should want. Today Sensibull’s own site puts its user base at roughly 500,000 monthly users, more than double the 2023 figure, even as the direct-subscription revenue line that used to fund the company largely disappeared for its biggest distribution channel. It is a rare example of a startup’s single biggest growth lever being the decision to stop charging its main product to its main user base.

The money behind it

• August 2018 — Rs 2.5 crore seed cheque: from Rainmatter, Zerodha’s fintech fund and incubator, Sensibull’s first and for years only institutional capital (Entrackr, August 2018; YourStory, August 2018).
• 2018–2023 — no further external fundraising reported: Sensibull grew on broker-distribution deals and its own subscription revenue rather than repeat VC rounds, unusual among Indian options-analytics platforms of its vintage.
• Reported January 2025 round: deal-tracking databases (Tracxn, Crunchbase, PitchBook) list a further primary infusion of roughly $6.96 million around January 2025, again from the Rainmatter/Zerodha side, taking lifetime funding to about $7.3 million on their data. This has not been confirmed by Sensibull or in independent business-press reporting found this session, so it is reported here as a data-provider estimate, not a verified fact.
• What Rainmatter changed at each stage: the 2018 cheque kept the relaunched company alive; the 2023 decision by parent broker Zerodha to fund free access for its own customers replaced Sensibull’s core revenue model outright; the reported 2025 infusion, if accurate, would be capital rather than a distribution change.
• Sole-backer structure: unlike most funded Indian startups, Sensibull has never disclosed a second institutional investor — its capital table, distribution and largest customer are all connected to the same broker group.

How it makes money

• Broker-sponsored free access: Zerodha pays for Sensibull directly so the platform costs its own retail customers nothing — “Zerodha is paying for Sensibull from their pockets,” per Sensibull’s own help-centre FAQ.
• Direct subscription, for users outside that deal: a paid Pro plan (reported around Rs 800 a month, or roughly Rs 640 a month on a six-month plan) remains the model for users who reach Sensibull through brokers that have not struck a similar sponsorship deal.
• Broker-bundled premium access: some broker partners reportedly bundle Pro-tier features into their own paid plans at subsidised rates rather than paying for blanket free access, per third-party platform reviews (Strike Money).
• The part people get wrong: because Sensibull shows up in filings with tens of crores of revenue, it is easy to assume that revenue comes from the traders using the app. For its largest user base, it comes from the broker instead — the end user is the product being served, not the one being billed.
• Cost base: FY25 total expenses were Rs 26.8 crore against Rs 28.4 crore of revenue, per Inc42 Datalabs — a thin operating margin for a company that used to run comfortably profitable.

The numbers

Only two fiscal years of granular financials are publicly available through statutory-filing aggregators; earlier years are not disclosed in any source checked this session, so this table is limited to what can be verified rather than estimated.

• Revenue: down 28.7% year-on-year in FY25 (Inc42 Datalabs, based on regulatory filings).
• Profit: down approximately 96% year-on-year in FY25 to Rs 47.9 lakh — Inc42 Datalabs cites this percentage decline without publishing the exact FY24 rupee profit figure, so that number is not stated here as a hard fact.
• Net margin: roughly 1.7% in FY25, down from a much healthier margin implied by FY24’s profit level.

Where the money comes from

Sensibull does not disclose a formal geography or product-line split, but its own material makes the channel split clear: it is a story of one dominant partner and several smaller ones.

• Zerodha users: the largest channel by users (Sensibull is free here since July 2023), funded by Zerodha rather than by end users — reported to be the majority of its roughly 500,000 monthly users, per company statements.
• Angel One, Upstox and ICICI Direct users: smaller broker-linked channels where Sensibull’s Pro subscription and broker-bundled plans are the monetisation route, per the company’s own broker-integration list.
• The surprise: a platform whose revenue line still runs into tens of crores earns most of it from a business-to-business arrangement with one broker, not from the retail traders who make up the overwhelming majority of its active user base.

The risks

• Single-partner concentration: Sensibull’s largest distribution channel, its only disclosed institutional investor, and its central monetisation deal all trace back to Zerodha and Rainmatter. Sensibull’s own FAQ confirms Zerodha funds free access for its customers directly — if that commercial arrangement were ever renegotiated or ended, the company’s revenue model for its biggest user base would need to be rebuilt from scratch.
• Regulatory tightening of the underlying market: SEBI’s derivatives-framework changes — a higher tail-risk margin from 20 November 2024, upfront option-premium collection from 1 February 2025, and intraday position-limit monitoring from 1 April 2025 — have already cut retail options activity. A SEBI-linked study found individual F&O traders’ participation fell around 20% and small-ticket (under Rs 10 lakh) participation fell about 25% following the tightening, reported by Business Standard in mid-2025, with Angel One separately reporting a roughly 20% drop in retail options premium turnover comparing January–February 2024 with the pre-regulation April–October 2023 baseline. A market with structurally fewer active option traders is a smaller addressable market for any options-analytics tool, Sensibull included.
• New compliance burden on strategy platforms: SEBI’s algorithmic-trading framework, phased in through 2025 with exchange registration frameworks due by 1 April 2025, requires platforms that publish ready-made strategies to empanel with exchanges and, for undisclosed (“black box”) logic, hold a Research Analyst licence and file ongoing compliance reports, as explained by Zerodha’s own Z-Connect blog in February 2025. Sensibull already holds an RA licence, but the wider framework adds recurring compliance overhead to the exact strategy-marketplace features that differentiate it from a plain charting tool.

The takeaway

Sensibull’s most interesting decision was not a product feature — it was giving away, for free, the thing it used to charge for. Most startups treat their paid tier as the business; Sensibull treated it as a bottleneck standing between the product and the scale it wanted, and let its biggest partner pay to remove that bottleneck. That is a hard trade to replicate: it only works if a partner with deep pockets and an aligned interest exists in the first place, and it leaves the standalone business more exposed to that partner’s decisions than a company selling directly to millions of individually paying customers would be. The transferable lesson is narrower than “make it free” — it is that distribution and monetisation do not have to sit with the same customer, provided you are honest with yourself, and with regulators, about who is really paying the bill.

Frequently asked questions

What does Sensibull do?

It is an options-trading analytics and strategy platform that connects to a user’s existing broker account — Zerodha, Angel One, Upstox or ICICI Direct — to show option-chain data, Greeks, open interest and ready-made multi-leg strategies, and to route orders back through that broker.

Who founded Sensibull and who owns it?

Abid Hassan founded the current version of Sensibull in 2017 along with Balajee Ramachandran and Sidharth Reddy, after an earlier 2013 attempt was shelved. Rainmatter, the investment arm of stockbroker Zerodha, is the only outside investor on record.

Is Sensibull free to use?

It has been free for Zerodha customers since July 2023, when Zerodha began paying for that access directly. Users who reach Sensibull through other brokers may still see a paid Pro plan, reported at around Rs 800 a month.

Is Sensibull profitable?

It reported a profit after tax of Rs 47.9 lakh on revenue of Rs 28.4 crore in FY25, a thin margin of roughly 1.7%, down sharply from a stronger FY24, per Inc42 Datalabs’ reading of its filings.

Why did Sensibull’s revenue fall in FY25?

Its FY25 revenue fell 28.7% year-on-year to Rs 28.4 crore. The decline coincides with SEBI’s tightening of index-derivatives rules through late 2024 and early 2025, which multiple reports say reduced overall retail options trading activity in India, shrinking the market Sensibull’s tools are built around.

Sources

Figures are as of September 2026. Currency converted at $1 ≈ ₹96.0 as of 18 September 2026 (Trading Economics).

• Zerodha Z-Connect, “Introducing Sensibull — the options trading platform,” August 2018
• Zerodha Z-Connect, “Sensibull is now free for all our customers,” July 2023
• Zerodha Z-Connect, “Explaining the latest SEBI algo trading regulations,” February 2025
• Entrackr, “Online stock broking firm Zerodha infuses Rs 2.5 Cr into Sensibull,” August 2018
• YourStory, “Zerodha makes Rs 2.5 Cr investment in options trading startup Sensibull,” August 2018
• The News Minute, “Stock trading startup Sensibull raises Rs 2.5 crore from fintech fund Rainmatter,” August 2018
• Inc42 Datalabs, Sensibull financials profile, accessed September 2026
• TheCompanyCheck, Sensibull Financial Services Private Limited filing summary, accessed September 2026
• Tofler, Sensibull Financial Services Private Limited company record, accessed September 2026
• YNOS Venture Engine, Sensibull startup profile (legal entity Riskilla Software Technologies Private Limited), accessed September 2026
• Sensibull, About page and Help Centre FAQ (“Who is paying for this?”), accessed September 2026
• The Org, Abid Hassan profile, accessed September 2026
• Tracxn, Crunchbase and PitchBook company profiles for Sensibull, accessed September 2026
• Business Standard, “Individual investors shrink 20% in F&O segment,” July 2025
• Business Standard, “Small investors in derivatives segment declined 49% after Sebi curbs: Icra,” May 2025
• Business Standard, “Sebi’s six-step measures seen making a dent in F&O volumes by up to 40%,” October 2024
• Angel One, “Retail option trading drops by 20% after SEBI measures,” 2024
• Outlook Business, “How SEBI’s new rules to curb F&O market madness will impact investors,” 2024
• Strike Money, Sensibull platform review, accessed September 2026

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