Zerodha Faced Issue on NSE Price Feeds on February 24

Zerodha needs no introduction today. It’s India’s leading stockbroker with a customer base of an excess of 3 million. Zerodha contributes to more than 10% of the trading volume that happens in India, and its online trading platform is popular thanks to its low charges and transparent operations. Our Zerodha Review shows that the platform is among the fastest-growing platforms in the country and has been actively involved in research and development to make its service more customer-oriented.

In one of the rare instances, exchange feeds on NSE across the platforms stopped suddenly in the morning at around 10:06 AM on February 24, 2021. However, the trading activity continued until the 11:40 AM post, which NSE completely halted the process without any prior warning. Market regulator SEBI has asked for the root cause behind the breakdown to ensure that this kind of incident won’t happen again.

Keeping the customer’s interest in focus, Zerodha decided to exit the intraday NSE equity position on the BSE and send the message to all its customers at around 2:30. Further, the platform decided to square off all NSE MIS and CO positions at 03:10 PM – as there was no update from the NSE. Zerodha decided to waive off its charges for intraday trading, keeping in mind the unprecedented nature of the situation.

The extreme step of squaring off BSE positions was taken by the Zerodha platform as no warning, or prior information was available from NSE. The authorities’ notification came at 03:17 PM, which was too late considering the risk involved with it is not going ahead with the squaring off. NSE is still to come up with a detailed statement and explaining the reasons behind the breakdown. It’s only once the official statement is out; more detailed analysis can be performed so that next time, the situation can be tackled effectively.