Which reinforces the point that there are HNI traders on Angel. With new SEBI rules, people need to bring their own capital (max margin is limited and same across all brokers). This is generally pledged shares or pledged MF units because bringing fresh capital is simply inefficient. The least one can do is buy liquid MF with the cash then pledge it and trade with the capital. This is why large traders => large investors.
That is correct. The folks that do trading are the only ones that can be easily tracked right now. Buy and hold (delivery) would not even show up in revenues. Someone that only does lump sum infrequently would not even show up in active clients all the time. I wish angel revealed total assets, but my other concern is applicable here. They have not focussed on cross-selling. In fact this is the primary reason they are building their super-app! They want people to download the angel app, and discover on the main app, that they can not just trade or buy stocks but also invest in MF or buy insurance. This cross selling is the key focus of the new app. Without this focus from management side, it is true that many users will download the app and forget about it. This is why it is great for me to see focus on cross-selling in the form of unifying the user experiences across different segments of revenue: distribution and broking. I completely agree that angel would possibly never reach the 25% of topline from distribution that ICICI sec has. However, there is an asymmetric payoff situation here. Upside is unlimited (depending on management execution). Downside is negligible. Because right now distribution is only 1% of topline. Also, this is very low cost cross-sell and hence even if the 1% goes to 5%-10% over 3 years, this flows directly to bottomline and improves margins and ROCE. That is the most likely scenario IMHO. Not factoring in a jump from 1% of topline to 20% in the near-term.
This is fantastic data. The problem is that it is a leap of faith to assume that majority (or even any significant) portion of this comes from HNIs. This could very well have come from HNIs contributing 5% of AUM and retailers (or target segments of zerodha/angel) contributing 95%. In fact if anything, wouldn’t we expect HNIs to be more careful (deploying money managers or financial advisors) with their money and not give it to a new MF?
IMHO they won’t be able to. Downturn would definitely take them down. Even if they got 25% of their revenues from distribution (best case), the 75% of it which is cyclical would go down. The cyclicality cannot be avoided. However, if we look at past data, the reduction in revenue might not be as bad as one might imagine. Have a look at this:
Please have a look at this part of 1st post. In my understanding the biggest risk with broking is not a large fall in revenues, it is buying it at wrong valuations (as is the risk with all cyclicals). If you pay for secular growth when buying a broking business, outcomes can be bad. Are the current valuations good, or bad? Everyone must make up their own minds.
i think new SEBI rules were also implemented post Karvy fiasco to prevent a repeat:
There is a strong assumption here that wealth is concentrated in a few hands. At a broad level, I agree that this is self evident and true. However, I don’t know how to quantify this phenomenon. Most nouveau rich people (not HNIs) I know of (not the 2nd and 3rd tier users, the tech & new age industry employees with 1M+ INR salaries and k+ M INR assets) prefer using zerodha for all their investing, and it is not due to the brokerage. There is definitely an element of social compliance wherein everyone in their acquaintance circle using zerodha makes them use zerodha. It does help that zerodha UX is way better than most out there. This is also the way to differentiate yourself in an industry where most things are commoditized. How much money they have cumulatively, compared to the HNIs, i dont know. But if one can get this data, it would be very interesting to look at. In some sense, this is the torso of the distribution of wealth. The entire discussion is how heavy the head is vs the torso vs the tail.
If indeed the head is very heavy compared to torso and tail, and if it is indeed the case that HNIs prefer bank backed brokerages, then your point is very valid, and cross sell opportunities are limited in the medium term. This statement has 2 assumptions that need some validation before it becomes a self evident truth. What i will do at my end is try and get that total assets number from the management in the next conference call 
Also, any details they can share on the HNIs.
Agreed, this is why the new app, and cross selling becomes important, even if it only contributes 5% to the topline, and not 25% like ICICI sec, to retain the customer.
Thanks a lot, this is definitely very helpful. 
helps the investors be aware of the risks and also to ask focussed questions to the management in the upcoming concalls to tease apart the real size of the cross selling opportunity.