Arihant Capital Referral Code

A referral that pays 20% of someone's brokerage for three years is not a thank-you for an introduction. It is a three-year interest in how much that person trades, and it should be read as one.

Arihant Capital is an Indian full-service broker, and its referral programme has been advertised as 20% of the brokerage generated by a referred client, across all segments, for three years. A voucher component of ₹5,000 has also been claimed. The three-year duration is the part worth thinking about.

Consider what you are actually being offered. Not a payment for making an introduction, which would end when the account opened, but a stake in another person's trading costs lasting three years. The more they trade, the more you receive; if they trade in derivatives, where brokerage accumulates fastest, you receive more still. If they invest sensibly, buy a diversified portfolio and leave it alone, you receive almost nothing. Every incentive in the structure points towards recruiting and encouraging active traders, and away from the behaviour that most evidence suggests serves retail investors best.

This is not an accusation against Arihant specifically — the structure was standard across the Indian brokerage industry. It is worth naming because a regulator named it first. The National Stock Exchange's circular of 14 August 2024 disallowed sharing brokerage income for referrals with the express purpose of preventing trade inducement: the exchange's own reasoning was that paying a percentage of a client's trading costs to the person who referred them creates pressure towards more trading. Referrers would instead have to be appointed Authorised Persons of the broker, with specific prior approval from the exchange for each person, which brings supervision and obligations with it. SEBI followed on 22 October 2024, prohibiting registered entities from associating with unregistered ones.

The story does not end there, and any page claiming it does is out of date. NSE circular NSE/INSP/66284 of 24 January 2025 kept the August 2024 circular in abeyance, following representations that certain categories of referrer should be allowed without Authorised Person registration. The matter went to the Brokers' Industry Standards Forum, whose proposal is under consideration, and SEBI has a consultation paper on broker referral programmes in development. So the rule that will eventually govern three-year revenue shares has not been written.

Two defects in the previous record are worth stating rather than silently overwriting. Its FAQ answers were scrambled — responses attached to the wrong questions, so that "what actions are necessary to claim the rewards" was answered with "No! Anyone can participate". And it claimed the programme is "valid globally", which a SEBI-regulated Indian broker offering Indian market access plainly cannot mean. That is the sixth content defect found in this export.

If you are considering this, the question that outlives every rule change is simple: would you recommend this broker to this person if the payment were zero? If yes, the referral is a bonus. If the three-year share is what makes the recommendation worth making, the regulator's concern is about you.