Groww bonds: how to buy bonds on Groww

What bonds you can actually buy on Groww right now

Groww's bond menu is narrower and newer than its stock and mutual-fund business, so start by separating what is confirmed live in-app from what is only enabled on paper or educational content on the website. As of 9 July 2026, one product is confirmed live and bookable: corporate bond IPOs — the primary market, where a company or NBFC raises money by issuing a new bond and you apply for an allotment, exactly like a share IPO. Groww launched this in 2025 and pitches it as making bonds 'as simple as investing in stocks or mutual funds'; its own bond-IPO page and 'Now Live: invest in bond IPOs' update confirm it. The second product — buying already-listed corporate bonds and NCDs on the secondary market — is what Groww's December 2025 SEBI OBPP licence enables, but we could not confirm from any Groww-owned source that in-app secondary bond buying is live: Groww's corporate-bonds landing page returned a 404, and a broker FAQ we checked stated Groww did not support secondary NCD trading. Treat secondary listed bonds as rolling out, not switched on — check the Bonds section of the app before you plan around them.

Government bonds (G-secs, T-bills, SDLs) are the honest grey area. Groww publishes a lot of educational material about government securities, but we could not confirm a first-class, in-app buying flow for G-secs or T-bills the way RBI Retail Direct offers one, or the way some brokers route the RBI non-competitive-bidding (NCB) auction. Treat G-sec availability on Groww as 'check in the app before you count on it.' If your goal is guaranteed sovereign access with zero markup, RBI Retail Direct is the cleaner route — the mechanics are laid out in /learn/how-to-invest-in-bonds, /learn/government-bonds-india and /learn/treasury-bills.

The regulatory identity matters because it tells you who you are actually dealing with and where your bonds are held. Groww's broking entity is Groww Invest Tech Private Limited (formerly Nextbillion Technology Private Limited); your bonds settle into a CDSL demat account (DP reg. IN-DP-417-2019), not into some Groww-controlled wallet. That is the same investor-protection setup as any SEBI-registered broker — the platform can fail without your holdings being at risk, because the depository holds them.

How to buy a bond on Groww — step by step

The primary-market path (bond IPOs) is the one Groww has built out and confirmed live; the secondary path for already-listed bonds is enabled by the OBPP licence but not confirmed live in-app as of July 2026, so treat the secondary steps below as what to expect once that product appears. Both sit under the Bonds section of the app. Here is the primary-market path first, followed by the secondary path.

For a corporate bond IPO, applications are accepted only during market hours — Groww states 10:00 AM to 5:00 PM on market days — and allotment is subject to availability, so a popular issue can close before its stated end date.

• 1. Open the Bonds section in the Groww app and go to the 'Open' tab to see live bond IPOs. If nothing is listed, no issue is currently open — that is normal; bond IPOs come and go in windows.
• 2. Read the listing card. Each shows the interest (coupon) rate and payout frequency, the credit rating (from CRISIL, CARE, ICRA or India Ratings — whichever SEBI-registered agency rated the issue) and risk profile, the tenure and minimum investment, and the opening/closing, allotment and listing dates. Most issues offer multiple series — monthly payout, annual payout, cumulative — that you can compare side by side.
• 3. Pick a series and enter quantity. The minimum is ₹10,000 (₹1,000 per unit), so you are buying in multiples of ten units and up. Choose the series whose payout pattern matches your need (regular income vs. roll-up).
• 4. Confirm and pay from your linked bank account, within the 10:00–17:00 window on a market day. This is an application, not a guaranteed fill — allotment depends on demand and availability.
• 5. Wait for allotment and listing. If allotted, the bonds are credited to your CDSL demat account and then list on the exchange per the timeline shown on the card. Save the allotment advice for tax time and note every coupon date in your calendar.
• Secondary (already-listed) bonds — once that product is live in your app — work differently: search the bond or its ISIN, review the live price and the yield to maturity (YTM) shown, enter quantity and buy. It settles to your demat on the standard cycle. Here the number that matters is the YTM at your buy price, not the original coupon — the same rule as buying any listed bond, explained in /learn/how-to-invest-in-bonds.

What it actually costs — and why the fee is hard to pin down

This is the part Groww is least transparent about, and it is worth being blunt. Groww's public pricing page details brokerage for equity delivery, intraday and F&O, plus DP and statutory charges — but it publishes no bond-specific fee schedule. That silence is itself the story: you cannot read Groww's bond cost off a rate card, so you have to infer it and then verify on the order screen.

Start by separating the primary and secondary cases, because they are priced completely differently. On a bond IPO (primary application) you normally pay no brokerage, the same as applying for a share IPO — the issuer covers distribution, and Groww lists no such fee. For an already-listed bond, the cost depends on which route you are actually on, and two mutually exclusive models get conflated:

The embedded spread is the bigger, quieter cost, and it is the model that applies to OBPP-distributed bonds. Bond platforms — Groww's OBPP channel included — typically advertise 'zero brokerage,' and it is technically true: there is often no visible commission line. The platform instead earns an embedded spread, sourcing a bond at one yield and offering it to you at a slightly lower yield, plus arranger/distribution fees from the issuer. You never see it as a line item; it is baked into the price and shows up only as a slightly lower YTM. This is the same 'zero brokerage isn't zero cost' mechanic we document in /learn/how-to-invest-in-bonds and in the platform reviews at /bonds.

The practical defence is simple: ignore the word 'zero' and judge every bond by the net YTM shown on the order screen. For a listed bond, compare that YTM against the bond's fair value on the exchange; if Groww's quote is materially worse, the spread is eating your return. For a bond IPO, compare the coupon and rating against other issues of similar tenure and credit quality before you decide the yield is worth the credit risk.

• Exchange-traded NCD via a broker's ordinary exchange route: you pay that broker's per-order brokerage. Groww's published equity-delivery rate is ₹20 or 0.1% of trade value, whichever is lower (minimum ₹5), plus statutory charges and, on a sell, DP charges. This is the model if a bond is bought as a normal on-exchange delivery trade through a broker.
• OBPP-distributed bond via Groww (the model its December 2025 OBPP licence enables): there is no ₹20-style per-order brokerage line at all. The cost is an embedded price spread baked into the yield (explained below). You cannot be charged both a per-order brokerage and an OBPP spread on the same purchase, so do not assume the equity-delivery rate applies to an OBPP-distributed bond — confirm which model your order screen actually shows before you buy.

Groww vs Zerodha vs a pure-play OBPP (Wint Wealth / IndiaBonds)

Where you buy a bond changes the price you pay and the shelf you can choose from. The three archetypes are: a broker that routes to the exchange (Zerodha), a pure-play bond platform that curates a shelf (Wint Wealth, IndiaBonds), and a hybrid that does both inside a mass-market app (Groww). None is 'best' outright — they suit different buyers.

Zerodha is a stock broker, not an OBPP. You buy listed bonds, NCDs and tax-free bonds on Kite by searching the name or ISIN and placing an order at the live exchange price — no curated markup beyond the market itself — and you bid for G-secs, T-bills and SDLs on Kite too, under Bids → Government securities. Zerodha moved government-securities bidding off Coin and onto Kite in February 2024, so Coin no longer handles it; the minimum bid is 100 units, roughly ₹10,000. That makes Zerodha typically the cheapest, most transparent route for on-exchange bonds and for direct government securities, but the shelf is 'whatever is trading,' with no hand-holding or credit curation.

Pure-play OBPPs like Wint Wealth and IndiaBonds do the opposite: they curate a shelf. Wint Wealth (SEBI reg. INZ000313632) specialises in higher-yield secured NBFC and securitised bonds — often 9–12% — with internal credit diligence; IndiaBonds offers a broad menu of listed corporate bonds and G-secs. Both run the embedded-spread model — Wint does not disclose its spread as a line item, and third-party estimates put it anywhere from roughly 0.25% to about 1.5% depending on the issue, plus arranger fees — so the yield you see is already net of their cut. They earn their place if you want access to bonds a mass-market broker doesn't list — but the credit is sub-AAA and the risk is real. Read the full breakdown at /bonds/wint-wealth-review before you fund anything.

Groww sits in the middle. Its pull is convenience: bond IPOs (and, once its OBPP-enabled secondary product is live, listed bonds) in the same app as your stocks and mutual funds, with a clean credit-rating-and-series interface. Its limits are a thinner curated corporate-bond shelf than a dedicated OBPP, an unconfirmed secondary-bond flow and no confirmed direct-G-sec flow, and the opaque fee position covered above. For an existing Groww user who wants to add a rated bond IPO or two without opening another account, that trade-off is reasonable; for someone building a serious bond ladder, a dedicated OBPP or RBI Retail Direct usually gives more control.

Is Groww the right place to buy your bonds?

Groww suits one buyer especially well: someone who already invests through Groww, wants to add a rated corporate bond IPO (and, once secondary listed bonds are live in-app, a listed NCD), and values doing it in the same app rather than onboarding to a specialist platform. The interface is clean, the credit rating and series comparison are front-and-centre, and the ₹10,000 entry is low. That convenience is a legitimate reason to use it.

It is a weaker fit if you want the cheapest, most transparent execution (Zerodha's exchange route or RBI Retail Direct win on cost and clarity), if you want a deep, curated high-yield shelf (a dedicated OBPP does more), or if you specifically want government securities with zero markup (use RBI Retail Direct). And because Groww publishes no bond fee schedule, you are trusting the on-screen YTM rather than an audited rate card — fine, as long as you actually check that number.

Whatever platform you pick, the risks that decide whether a bond is a good deal do not change with the app. Credit/default risk is the big one: a high coupon is payment for higher risk, not free money, and defaults reach even regulated platforms — the TruCap NCD default in July 2025 (a CARE-rated issue) hit buyers across several OBPPs. Liquidity risk means many bonds barely trade, so plan to hold to maturity. Interest-rate risk means a bond's price falls if rates rise and you sell early. And tax-at-slab quietly erodes returns — bond interest (coupon) is taxed at your income-tax slab, so always compare bonds on post-tax yield. The full risk playbook and the tax math are in /learn/how-to-invest-in-bonds and /learn/corporate-bonds-india, and neutral platform reviews live at /bonds.