Rainmatter Investments, the investment arm of Indian stockbroker Zerodha, acquired a 51% stake in PensionBox, a Bengaluru-based platform for opening and managing National Pension System (NPS) accounts, according to regulatory filings reported by Entrackr on February 11, 2026. The deal was worth about $2 million.
The transaction combined primary and secondary components: part of the money went into the company as fresh capital, and part bought out existing shareholders. The split between the two was not disclosed, and co-founder Kuldeep Parashar declined to share the valuation.
After the deal, founders Kuldeep Parashar and Shivam Parashar, who are brothers, hold a combined 48% of the company. PensionBox continues to operate on its own, and the two companies have agreed on a division of work: PensionBox will concentrate on corporate NPS plans, while Zerodha's Coin app handles retail investors.
What PensionBox built
PensionBox was founded in 2021 and is regulated by the Pension Fund Regulatory and Development Authority (PFRDA). Its software lets individuals and companies open NPS accounts quickly, track investments, set up recurring SIP contributions and run automated corporate NPS programmes for staff.
Inc42 reported that the platform connects to employers' HRMS and payroll systems, so a company can offer corporate NPS to its employees without paperwork. When an employee leaves, the corporate NPS account can be converted into an individual account. The company said it will stay with PFRDA-regulated pension products such as NPS for minors and NPS Swavalamban, will not sell insurance or ULIPs, and plans to add a provident fund product for businesses.
The business is still small. For the financial year that ended in March 2025, PensionBox reported operating revenue of Rs 1.75 lakh (about $2,000) against expenses of Rs 77 lakh (about $90,000), for a net loss of Rs 75 lakh (about $87,000), according to Entrackr.
“We want to partner with founders who are working on these products full-time, living and breathing the problem,”
Why Zerodha is buying in
Zerodha has said it wants to focus on fixed-income products such as NPS, fixed deposits and mutual funds. Inc42 described the arrangement as a joint venture to build corporate pension infrastructure, with the corporate platform to be co-branded with Zerodha and retail NPS left on Coin. The partners set a goal of reaching 7 to 8 lakh (700,000 to 800,000) companies over the next three to four years.
The opportunity they point to is large. Outlook Business reported that only about 22,000 companies in India offer NPS benefits, compared with nearly 11 lakh (1.1 million) firms that run provident fund programmes. Recent rule changes have made NPS more attractive: the regulator cut the lock-in period to 15 years, and in December 2025 raised the share of the corpus that can be withdrawn from 60% to 80% and extended the maximum age from 75 to 85.
Somnath Mukherjee, vice president of corporate development at Zerodha and Rainmatter Capital, told Inc42 that awareness is the biggest constraint on growth. Zerodha's Neelesh Verma said Rainmatter does not interfere in founders' day-to-day decisions and invests where it shares the long-term vision, according to Entrackr.
The founders and the early backers
The secondary part of the deal gave a complete exit to PensionBox's early investors: 100X.VC, SAT Industries, Keynote Capital, LetsVenture and a group of angel investors. The size of their earlier investments was not reported.
Kuldeep Parashar said the new capital, together with money raised earlier, should fund the company's growth over the next one to two years. He told Inc42 that building a good company in the pension space takes seven to eight years.
A majority stake, not a full takeover
Unlike most acquisitions, the founders remain large shareholders, holding almost half of the company alongside Rainmatter. Mukherjee told Inc42 that the companies did not intend to publicise the investment amount; the $2 million figure comes from filings and press reports.
The deal adds a pension-focused business to Zerodha's portfolio at a time when Indian regulators are trying to widen private-sector participation in NPS, which added more than 12 lakh (1.2 million) private subscribers in 2024-25, according to Inc42.
