I am one of their Authorized Persons and in deep headache with n number of things. I can quite ruthlessly give you review as I am sort of Authorized Person or Marketing Affiliate or Partner of every broker.
So I do not have ANY BIAS. I even have multiple AP licenses in various names in a properly diversified manner.
Backstory:
Like @nithin started Zerodha, Alice is actually very old company from the South. There was fight between two brothers. One made a separate arm named Zebu. Siddharth kept the original firm Aliceblue.
They partnered with Tradelab for their charting software which is also backed by Zerodha Universe. Read here Here’s how Zerodha became India’s biggest stock brokerage - Times of India. Zerodha’s first investment was Tradelab.
Platform:
That’s like Kite V1.
Sas Online, Aliceblue, Religare and half dozen broker uses same software. It is way inferior to Zerodha’s Kite. So, that’s the answer to how is the platform!
Platform Stability:
They have less active clients than Zerodha. Still, it hangs a lot.
- It has problem with cookies and it shows different people’s data if the other person had logged into your system before and logged out.
- It has lots of glitches which you can see by inspecting elements. Mostly, basic Angular JS errors.
- The data lags. The chart lags because load balancing is not proper.
But, the NEST platform works like butter.
Also, unlike zerodha, their API is completely free. So, APs like us who have certain set of clients made their own platforms like I have one in Telegram.
Leverage:
It is at the discretion of branch managers. Yes, they have a branch manager and regional manager structure. Some branch managers are good and cool. Some are too bad.
I can easily get anyone 10x leverage but right now they have capped it to 5L capital because most big 10x clients tend to lose money and end up in debit balances.
They have both a % plan like full brokers and per order plan like Zerodha. Everyone is instructed to shovel down % plans to the customers.
Customer Care
- They don’t care.
- They don’t care about their APs/partners too.
- They cut the positions without your authorization making random rules. (Like some cases, they do not allow to take your BankNIFTY Thursday positions to delivery so that they can make brokerage on the exit leg.)
- Their RMS is too bad. Customers often keep going into debit balance.
If the branch manager has their target filled. Your account opening will take more than 2 months. There are three directors. Each director has their own liking. Like one of the directors used to give Mumbai branch an unfair advantage.
If your branch manager is bad. You’re done and dusted.
It takes more than 20 mails to get a normal thing solved. In Zerodha, even if the customer support doesn’t respond, Nithin responds always without fail. I wonder How.
That shows the difference.
UnEthical
- Their RMS is operated from Bangalore and has ahead of their own. Sometimes, they with trickily make your leverage 5x from 10x. Then you need to do 500 emails and calls to get it done.
- Initially they told many customers that there are no charge of demat account. But, there are charges afterward. Pure chaotic mismanagement.
- Random square off of positions from the RMS team. You need to chase for months to get a refund.
- They will also sometime take positions and that can end up making money. In that case, they will take that money from your ledger the next day. This is the next level.
Client files with SEBI and sometimes they give generic replies there also.
Aliceblue is only sustaining because of 10x leverage and free API and few too awesome branch managers.
My branch manager which I prefer became father in this lockdown (You can only imagine the hardship.), He still works a huge amount of time, from peon to dealer lol all himself.
Unless it is necessary. Do not bother opening an account.
We created their python wrappers, many underlying sub terminals, and this, that. So, stuck with them as their API is free and already ended up building lots of things around its ecosystem.
I have near 14K active customers in my sub brokerage in total here and there (Comparison sites, This, That - Afterall, its business. PS: Its unrelated to Unofficed). In Zerodha, I have the least but I will blindly recommend everyone to Zerodha!
You know why - The founder is terribly transparent and He cares!
Anyways I have a slightly detailed review on options trading and this broker in a comparative manner.
