Reliance Money, the brokerage and financial products distribution arm of Reliance - Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group on Tuesday announced its offer of free trading accounts for one year for trading in shares up to Rs 5 lakh. Earlier, the company was charging a flat fee of Rs 500 for trading up to Rs 5 lakh in one year. The industry norm for the brokerage fee is around 0.50 per cent for delivery based equity trades, which works out to around Rs 2,500 for Rs 5 lakh trading.

The free-brokerage offer by Reliance Money is for trading in stocks, commodities and others instruments as well. Addressing a press conference here, Reliance Money Executive Director & CEO Sudip Bandyopadhyay said this offer would only be available to those opening a demat account with Reliance Money in the next few weeks. This initiative is primarily targeted at increasing the penetration of demat accounts in the country - something which has remained stagnant at around 6 million for last few years, he said adding, “Broader goal is to promote equity cult in the country.”

Boost to market
“Our entire business model aims to significantly increase the market size, rather than capture major portion of the existing market. We feel that a sizeable portion of Indian investors are not participating in the market because of non-availability of reputed brand and price entry barrier. We have addressed both these concerns with this first-of-its-kind limited period offer,” said Mr Bandyopadhyay.

Reliance Money, present in over 700 cities in India with over 3,500 outlets, would be focus on semi-urban and rural areas with this initiative. It plans to add over 2 lakh demat accounts with this offer.