India, July 31 -- HT Syndication

Bengaluru (Karnataka) [India], July 31: For years, India's active traders picked a broker on one number, the price of a trade. That question is now answered. Flat per-order pricing sits on nearly every serious platform, and for the most active traders, cheap brokerage no longer sets anyone apart. What traders want next is harder to put on a pricing page: an edge. And more and more, that edge isn't decided by what a trade costs, but by how well it's executed.

Brokerage has been commoditised. Execution has not.

For most of the last decade, the competitive story in Indian broking was about cost. The move from percentage-based commissions to a flat fee per order reshaped the industry and made the discount b...