I just saw this tweet from @nithin
https://twitter.com/Nithin0dha/status/1270022899416526848
What is NSE NOW?
Why is it stopped?
Does it in anyway affect trading at Zerodha?
Who does this affect?
NSE NOW or NSE Neat on Web is a free trading platform that was offered by NSE to all its members or brokers. The cost of setting up a trading platform is quite high, especially for small brokerage firms. NOW was provided completely free of cost by NSE, so it gave many brokers an opportunity to run their businesses with almost no technology cost. Extremely innovative as an idea.
NSE NOW was the reason we could start Zerodha back in 2010. We spotted an opportunity to disrupt pricing since technology was coming free of cost. We used NSE NOW platform for 2 years before moving to NEST, which was a platform offered by Omnesys (who got bought by TR). We have not more than 5 customers (who were clients from back then) still using NOW, so NOW stopping doesn’t really affect us.
Every technology platform can have downtime, even NSE NOW. The last few times NSE NOW had an issue, the exchange received lashback from brokers and customers. This even when NSE has been offering this service free of cost. I am guessing it wouldn’t have made business sense to continue running this for free and get bad publicity.
I am guessing around 300 small to mid-size brokers (many prop trading firms) were relying on NSE NOW completely for trading. These people will now have to find an alternate trading platform. BSE has a similar platform called BOW, so I am guessing most of these firms will shift from NOW to BOW or go empanel with a trading platform vendor like Thomson Reuters (now Refinitiv) or 63 moons (earlier called Financial technologies)
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