ICICIdirect wins the online trading race

Mumbai: Farita S Dohadwala hates traveling. But being a stock market trader she had no other choice but to travel almost every day from her home in Kalina, a Mumbai suburb, to her brokers office in downtown Nariman Point.

For Dohadwala, the weary days are over now. She now trades from the comfort of her home, using ICICIs online trading facility, ICICIdirect.com.

My husband and I have been trading daily for the last 20 years. Earlier we had to place orders with the broker and get quotations over the phone. Once the transaction was over we had to go all the way to collect the cheques, which again would take three days to get cleared, says Dohadwala.

Now, she says, it has become easy. We just log on to www.icicidirect.com, see the rates and state our limits. The managers buy and sell according to our instructions. If we gain, our bank account is credited immediately and we can even withdraw the money through ATM.

Dohadwala is not alone. More than 1,30,000 persons, including NRIs in the Gulf, who trade in shares listed on the NSE, are registered with the site, which is Indias largest and worlds tenth share-trading portal. The site was launched last April by ICICI Web Trade Ltd, a fully-owned subsidiary of ICICI. Around 15,000 people trade via ICICIdirect.com every day.

Says Anup Bagchi, the chief operating officer of the portal: The unique three-in-one trading account of the site offers a hassle-free and seamless trading experience for the customer. The customers bank, demat and broking accounts are linked automatically. All that the customer needs to do is to just place the order of the chosen scrip and the desired price - our system does the rest of the work.