Hello all,
Dhan has been growing significantly over the past few months, and we are pleased to see that now ~ 60% of our users join Dhan directly and majority of them are being referred to Dhan by our existing users. We are ever grateful for the trust our users have shown in us over the time, not just by being with us and helping make Dhan an incredible platform for investing & trading, but also staying with us while we had a few hiccups, to now referring their friends & family to Dhan.
The onboarding experience at Dhan has truly been a lightning-fast experience from the day we opened Dhan for all users, on 4 November 2021. Many of our initial users loved the experience, and so many of them were able to take their first trade within minutes of starting their onboarding & KYC journey with us.
Over the past few months there have been many regulatory changes and as a result, many of the post-onboarding steps are now being mandated to be done prior to Trading & Investing accounts being opened. In light of these changes, steps like validation and verification of Mobile & Email Address, confirmation that PAN is linked to Aadhaar, Declarations & couple of more checks are now supposed to happen before the user is permitted to trade.
We wish to inform you that as a SEBI regulated entity, we are dependent on several intermediaries (KRA, Exchanges, Depository, RTA etc) to process your onboarding data and activate your account on their end as well. As a result, the account opening process with Stock Trading platforms usually takes 3-4 business days, and in some cases it’s a bit longer for weekends and holidays.
Here’s what happens behind the scenes:
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When you submit your Onboarding & KYC details to Dhan, our team of onboarding experts usually takes 1-2 hours (in many cases this is within minutes) to verify these details and communicate the status to you. This is possible because only a few steps require human verification (for exceptions) while most of the details are verified via automated processes.
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When all documents are in place, we immediately start sending your details to various intermediaries - KRA, Exchanges, Depository, CKYC and others.
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The first intermediary that we send your documents to is KRA (or KYC Registration Agency). KRAs now validate your Proof of Identity (PAN), Proof of Address, Your Email and Mobile Number.
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This is why you may receive requests to validate your Email Address and Mobile Number from KRA (CVL KRA in our case) immediately after you open an account with us (or any other SEBI registered trading or investing platform). The usual action for users should be to click on the link in the OTP received from KRA to verify their Email Address and Mobile Number, however it is not mandatory. KRAs have explicitly mentioned that they will validate your email address and mobile via the delivery report as well.
Note: If your number is on DND or for some reason, KRA is unable to validate your email or phone number, your account opening may get paused indefinitely. -
If all your details are in order (which officially takes 2 working days for KRA to validate), we send your documents to Exchanges (NSE, BSE and MCX) and Depository (CDSL) to ensure that your accounts are created with all of them. They in turn would also refer to your updated documents and verified details in the KRA. Exchanges and Depository usually take 1-2 working days to validate and verify your details, before sending us an update that the accounts are marked as ‘Ready to Trade’.
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While our Onboarding process goes through quick approval, due to the said changes on the processes, it may now take about 3-4 working days for your account to get activated across KRA and Exchanges (other intermediaries are real-time for now).
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Once your Stock Trading & Investing account is ready across all, we will inform you about this. You will get an email and notification stating that your Dhan account is now ready to Invest / Trade.
At Dhan, while we may not have a control on the time taken by other intermediaries, we will soon make this information more accessible and transparent so that you can view your onboarding status in real-time. We also plan to notify you if there is an unforeseen delay in the account opening process. If there are delays, we’re constantly in touch with regulatory authorities to ensure we get you started at the earliest possible.
We understand that you may want to get started quickly, however it is important to ensure that all regulatory requirements and compliance measures are completed while we get ready to welcome you to Dhan.
We wish all our users are able to experience Dhan - our lightning-fast trading and investing platform in the least possible time.
As always, if there’s any feedback, suggestions or queries regarding this entire process, please feel free to drop in a note at feedback@dhan.co
-Anirudha Basak
Product at Dhan