Nikhil Dhoka appointed chief executive officer of JioBlackRock Broking

MUMBAI: India has plenty of people who want to invest. What it lacks is a broker that makes them feel at home. Nikhil Dhoka has taken the job of fixing that. He has joined JioBlackRock Broking as chief executive officer, based in Mumbai, from September 2026, with a brief to make investing simpler, more intuitive and open to more Indians.

The pitch is sensible. Dhoka says India’s capital markets are at an exciting inflection point. Participation is growing, but investing and trading can still feel complex and intimidating, and he sees a real opportunity to change that. His ambition is to make markets easier to understand and navigate, so more Indians can take part with confidence. He also says the strengths of Jio Financial Services and BlackRock, together with the wider asset management and wealth ecosystem, put the business in a position to deliver greater value across a customer’s financial journey.

Few chief executives arrive with such a clear record. Start with Kotak Neo, where Dhoka spent three years and ten months, from December 2022 to September 2026. He began as executive vice-president and head of product, reimagining journeys for traders, investors and wealth clients, launching new value propositions and category-defining features, and strengthening a platform that powers nearly all digital trading activity at Kotak Securities. In April 2026 he became senior executive vice-president and head of product and revenue. He led Kotak Securities’ flagship trading and investing platform, with responsibility for digital business, product, design and revenue. He sat on the management committee and on Kotak Group’s digital distribution board. He also helped scale Kotak Neo into a top-five broker by trading volume. A broker that has risen into the top five has taught its product head what customers want.

The earlier jobs show how he thinks. At Western Union, Dhoka was director of product strategy and management for Western Union Digital from November 2020 to November 2022. He led global product strategy and growth for the digital money transfer business and managed more than 30 product managers across Europe and India. His remit covered the consumer mobile app and web platforms in over 20 countries across Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Southeast Asia and Latin America. He drove the global omnichannel strategy, helping retail customers move to digital transfers. He led partnership products that let banks and financial institutions offer cross-border remittances through Western Union’s platform, and he championed in-app help and chatbots. The digital money transfer business exceeded $1 billion in revenue in 2021.

Before that came Paytm, where he was vice-president for product from September 2017 to November 2020, working across fintech, e-commerce, content and gaming. He led product strategy across the Paytm app, which spans Wallet, UPI, Paytm Bank, bill payments, merchant payments and e-commerce. He led business and product for third-party apps, including Paytm’s first app-in-app integration, which launched Zomato food delivery. He worked on product-market fit and partner engagement to establish Paytm Payments in Saudi Arabia and the GCC. And he led product and business for the seller ecosystem at Paytm Mall, helping thousands of sellers and brands, and building systems to improve delivery time, assortment and pricing.

Dhoka is also a builder at heart. He was business and product head at Browntape, a multichannel e-commerce firm, from June 2014 to December 2016. He led its software-as-a-service and enterprise business, working with small businesses and large brands to set up online retail technology and omnichannel infrastructure. Browntape let brands run sales across Amazon, Flipkart, Snapdeal, ShopClues, Jabong and Myntra, as well as their own websites, from a single console, with inventory and order management, MIS and logistics built in. Before that, from August 2009 to May 2014, he was founder of Unit Marketing Solutions, which he started to give customer-facing businesses cutting-edge loyalty and CRM services. Its clients came from healthcare, lifestyle, automotive, jewellery, apparel and infrastructure, and it ran loyalty programmes for jewellery and healthcare chains.

The foundations go back further. At Reliance Retail, Dhoka was senior product manager for customer-facing solutions from April 2008 to June 2009, working on loyalty design, programme management and data analytics. He was part of the core team that managed the Reliance One programme across more than 800 stores and over 5 million members. He spent 2007 and early 2008 on the product team at ConVis Technologies, a company started by IIT Bombay engineers to build systems for the next generation of retail and hospitality. He worked as a business intelligence consultant at Siemens Information System Limited, for two major British clients, from December 2005 to December 2006, and at 2s consulting, for clients in India’s green energy and pharma sectors, from October 2004 to November 2005.

Put it together and the CV reads like a job description for this role. He has built for investors, shoppers and remitters. He has run products with millions of users and has also been a founder. He knows how large enterprises change and how small teams move. That is the mix JioBlackRock Broking needs as it tries to earn the trust of first-time investors.

Dhoka says he looks forward to building a passionate team that brings together a deep understanding of customer needs, thoughtful design and technology, to rethink the capital markets experience. He has thanked the leadership of Jio Financial Services and BlackRock for their trust and confidence. With that backing, and a record like his, the business is well placed to make investing feel a little less daunting for India’s next crop of investors.