This makes CDSL vs CAMS a more useful comparison than it first appears.

Both are asset-light financial-infrastructure companies.

Both benefit from India's shift from physical savings toward financial assets.

Both possess deep network effects.

Neither needs to lend money or take traditional credit risk.

Yet the variables that create revenue are quite different.

For Bull Run's company data, see CDSL, CAMS and the Depositories, Clearing Houses and Other Intermediaries sector. Bull Run also compares BSE vs CDSL.

Q1 FY27 comparison: similar profit, very different infrastructure

The most important definition: ₹88 lakh crore of CDSL custody is not comparable with ₹56 lakh crore of CAMS AUM

CDSL reported assets under custody of approximately ₹88.2 lakh crore at June 2026.

CAMS reported approximately ₹56 lakh crore of mutual-fund AUM serviced.

Those numbers should not be used to claim that CDSL is “1.6 times larger.”

CDSL's custody value represents securities held electronically across its depository infrastructure.

CAMS AUM represents mutual-fund assets serviced for its AMC clients.

The economic fees charged against those bases are different.

The turnover frequency is different.

The customer relationship is different.

The regulatory framework is different.

CDSL's moat starts with 18.59 crore demat accounts

CDSL became the first Indian depository to cross 18.59 crore demat accounts by June 30, 2026.

The company added approximately 58 lakh accounts during Q1.

A year earlier it had about 15.86 crore.

That is an increase of around 2.73 crore accounts in twelve months.

The exact account-growth percentage is approximately 17%.

More importantly, CDSL maintained roughly 80% market share by number of demat accounts.

This creates network depth across:

• brokers,
• depository participants,
• listed companies,
• registrars,
• clearing corporations,
• banks,
• retail investors.

One demat account can monetise for years

A newly opened demat account is not a single-use transaction.

An investor may keep that account for a decade.

During that period the account can be involved in:

• share purchases and sales,
• IPO allotments,
• bonus shares,
• stock splits,
• rights issues,
• pledges and margin pledges,
• off-market transfers,
• corporate voting,
• mutual-fund units held in demat form.

That installed base creates a durable infrastructure asset without CDSL owning the underlying securities.

CDSL earns from issuers as well as investors

CDSL's economic model is not merely a charge each time someone sells a share.

Annual issuer charges are a major revenue stream.

Q1 annual issuer income was around ₹128 crore.

The relevant folio count reached approximately 38.73 crore.

Issuer income increased by roughly 12% year on year.

Transaction charges contributed around ₹66 crore.

This matters because issuer fees behave differently from secondary-market trading activity.

A security can continue generating depository maintenance economics even during a quiet trading month.

CAMS's moat begins with 67.2% of mutual-fund AUM

CAMS serviced approximately ₹56 lakh crore of mutual-fund assets during Q1 FY27.

AUM increased 14.8% year on year.

The company maintained approximately 67.2% market share.

This is an unusually strong infrastructure position because switching a large AMC's registrar and transfer agent is operationally complex.

An RTA maintains:

• investor identity records,
• scheme folios,
• purchase and redemption transactions,
• SIP mandates,
• nomination records,
• bank mandates,
• statements,
• tax and capital-gains data,
• service requests.

A large AMC therefore does not change RTA because another vendor offers a marginally cheaper invoice.

The operational risk of migration is substantial.

Equity AUM makes CAMS's serviced asset base more valuable

CAMS equity AUM reached approximately ₹31.4 lakh crore.

Growth was 17.6%, ahead of industry equity-AUM growth of roughly 16.4%.

Equity assets represented about 56% of CAMS-serviced mutual-fund AUM.

That matters for two reasons.

First, rising equity markets increase the absolute value of assets on which some asset-based servicing fees are calculated.

Second, equity investors tend to generate significant SIP, redemption, switch and service activity.

CAMS therefore benefits from both asset appreciation and investor transaction growth.

SIPs create a recurring transaction annuity for CAMS

Live SIP accounts serviced by CAMS increased 18.8% to approximately 6.72 crore.

The company's disclosed share increased to around 63.9%.

Q1 SIP collections reached approximately ₹59,681 crore, up 20.7%.

This is one of the highest-quality parts of CAMS's growth.

A lump-sum transaction may happen once.

A SIP generates a fresh transaction every month.

A ten-year SIP mandate can therefore create 120 recurring contributions before considering top-ups, switches or redemptions.

CDSL also benefits from SIP financialisation — indirectly

Many mutual-fund units are maintained through statement-of-account mode rather than demat.

Those units sit inside RTA systems such as CAMS.

But the same household that begins investing through mutual funds often later opens a brokerage account, buys listed securities or participates in IPOs.

India's financialisation therefore expands the addressable base for both companies.

CAMS captures the mutual-fund administration layer.

CDSL captures much of the direct-security ownership layer.

Unique investors versus demat accounts is another dangerous comparison

CAMS's unique investor base crossed approximately 4.85 crore.

CDSL had 18.59 crore demat accounts.

This does not imply CDSL has four times as many unique people.

A person may have:

• multiple demat accounts,
• accounts across brokers,
• joint or category-specific accounts.

CAMS's metric refers to its defined unique mutual-fund investor base across the assets it services.

The measures are useful individually but not as direct customer-count rankings.

Profitability: CAMS generated more profit from a moderately larger revenue base

CAMS's operating revenue increased 11.5% while EBITDA increased 18.3%.

That is positive operating leverage.

Expenses grew more slowly than fee revenue.

EBITDA margin expanded about 270 basis points from 43.7% to 46.4%.

For an asset-light processing platform, that is exactly the direction investors want.

CDSL remains extremely profitable too

CDSL's consolidated revenue from operations increased about 13% to ₹293 crore.

Consolidated PAT increased around 15% to ₹118 crore.

Total income was ₹340.5 crore.

Its business also generates very high return on shareholder capital because customer securities are not financed from CDSL's balance sheet.

Bull Run's August database showed CDSL ROE around 24.5%.

CAMS ROE was approximately 39.0%.

The difference helps explain why CAMS can earn similar quarterly profit despite carrying a smaller market capitalisation.

CAMS is no longer only a mutual-fund RTA

Non-mutual-fund revenue grew approximately 28.4%.

Its contribution reached around 14.9% of revenue.

The businesses include:

• CAMS Alternatives,
• CAMS KRA,
• CAMS Pay,
• Bima Central / insurance repository services,
• GIFT City fund services,
• data and consent-management products.

CAMS Alternatives alone crossed roughly ₹3.2 lakh crore of AUM serviced and added 50 mandates during the quarter.

CAMS Pay revenue increased about 69%.

This diversification matters because the core mutual-fund RTA business already has high market share.

Future growth increasingly needs adjacent financial infrastructure.

CDSL is diversifying around the ownership ledger

CDSL's subsidiaries and investments extend into:

• KYC services,
• insurance repository services,
• commodity repositories,
• account-aggregator ecosystem initiatives,
• international financial-centre infrastructure,
• digital investor services.

The common thread is financial records and trusted market infrastructure.

That adjacency is strategically sensible because CDSL's core competitive advantage is trusted identity, ownership and transaction data.

Which company has more recurring revenue?

The answer depends on what “recurring” means.

CDSL has more contractual/infrastructure recurrence.

Annual issuer charges and long-lived demat accounts remain on the platform regardless of daily mutual-fund inflows.

CAMS has more flow-and-AUM recurrence.

SIPs repeat monthly and mutual-fund assets generally stay under administration for years.

However, CAMS's asset-based revenue can be affected by market levels.

If equity markets fall 25%, the value of equity AUM serviced can decline even when investor count remains unchanged.

Market sensitivity works differently

Regulation is a genuine pricing risk for CDSL

Depositories are regulated market infrastructure institutions.

They cannot simply raise every charge whenever costs rise.

SEBI influences:

• transaction charges,
• KYC economics,
• settlement architecture,
• direct payout,
• cyber-security standards,
• interoperability,
• investor protection obligations.

CDSL's KYC subsidiary has already faced mandated pricing changes.

That illustrates a core infrastructure trade-off: strong market position does not mean unlimited pricing power.

CAMS also operates inside regulated economics

Mutual-fund RTAs operate under AMC contracts within a heavily regulated mutual-fund ecosystem.

Industry pressure on total expense ratios ultimately creates pressure across the servicing stack.

AMCs constantly seek lower administration costs as AUM scales.

CAMS's defence is productivity.

If technology allows it to process more transactions per employee and automate paper-heavy workflows, the company can tolerate lower unit fees while still expanding margins.

Technology spend is therefore not optional for either company

Both businesses are effectively financial databases with regulatory responsibility.

System availability matters.

Cyber-security matters.

Disaster recovery matters.

Data integrity matters.

A technology failure at a consumer app is inconvenient.

A technology failure at a depository or RTA can disrupt securities ownership or fund transactions across the financial system.

Investors should therefore avoid rewarding short-term margin expansion created by underinvestment in infrastructure resilience.

Valuation: CAMS was dramatically cheaper on earnings

CAMS's earnings multiple was roughly 40% lower than CDSL's.

At the same time, CAMS had the higher Bull Run ROE and slightly faster Q1 PAT growth.

That makes the valuation gap analytically important.

CDSL's premium must therefore be justified primarily by:

• demat-account dominance,
• long-lived issuer relationships,
• broader direct-securities exposure,
• lower dependence on a concentrated AMC client set,
• expectations of continued retail-market financialisation.

Why CAMS's one-year return is excluded

CAMS completed a 1-to-5 share subdivision effective December 5, 2025.

Each ₹10 face-value share was split into five ₹2 shares.

Bull Run's raw historical series still contains pre-split prices above ₹4,000 alongside post-split prices around ₹750.

That creates a meaningless raw one-year return near -80% if corporate-action adjustment is not applied.

The underlying shareholder did not lose 80% because of the split.

For that reason this article excludes CAMS's raw one-year return and unadjusted 52-week high.

P/B is less useful than ROE for these businesses

CDSL and CAMS both trade at double-digit book multiples.

That would look extreme for a bank or capital-intensive manufacturer.

But neither business needs large shareholder equity to support customer assets.

CDSL does not fund the ₹88 lakh crore of securities under custody.

CAMS does not fund the ₹56 lakh crore of mutual-fund AUM it services.

That allows very high return on capital.

For this type of company, investors should prioritise:

• earnings growth,
• network share,
• revenue recurrence,
• margin durability,
• technology investment,
• regulatory pricing risk.

Which has the stronger moat?

CDSL probably has the broader structural infrastructure moat.

Its demat-account network spans direct equity ownership across brokers and issuers.

The account relationship is exceptionally sticky.

CAMS has the stronger mutual-fund administration moat.

Its 67.2% serviced-AUM share and deeply embedded AMC integrations are difficult to displace.

The difference is addressable market.

CDSL sits across listed securities ownership.

CAMS is much more heavily exposed to mutual funds and adjacent fund administration.

Which currently has better profitability?

CAMS.

It generated slightly more quarterly PAT despite having a market capitalisation roughly one-third smaller.

Its EBITDA margin expanded to 46.4% and Bull Run ROE was around 39%.

CDSL remains extremely profitable but currently carries a much higher earnings valuation.

Which has the better growth runway?

Both have powerful structural runways.

CDSL benefits from:

• more Indians opening brokerage accounts,
• greater direct-equity ownership,
• IPO participation,
• dematerialisation of additional asset classes,
• more corporate actions and pledging.

CAMS benefits from:

• mutual-fund AUM growth,
• monthly SIP expansion,
• new AMCs,
• SIFs,
• AIFs and PMS administration,
• insurance and payments infrastructure,
• GIFT City funds.

CDSL vs CAMS: category-by-category

Which is stronger in 2026?

CAMS currently offers the stronger combination of earnings conversion and valuation.

Its Q1 profit slightly exceeded CDSL's, margins expanded, ROE was higher and the stock traded at a much lower P/E.

Its mutual-fund market share is already dominant and non-MF businesses are beginning to diversify the revenue base.

CDSL remains the broader direct-securities infrastructure franchise.

Its 18.59 crore demat accounts provide an exceptionally sticky network that reaches across brokers, listed companies and investors.

The issue is valuation.

A roughly 64x earnings multiple requires many years of profitable account and transaction growth.

The comparison can therefore be summarised as:

CDSL = broader securities-ownership moat at a higher earnings multiple.

CAMS = dominant MF-servicing moat with stronger current earnings valuation.

What to monitor next

• CDSL demat additions: tells investors whether retail financialisation remains strong.
• CDSL demat market share: NSDL competition is the main structural market-share variable.
• CDSL annual issuer income: key recurring infrastructure line.
• CDSL transaction charges: captures activity sensitivity.
• CAMS MF AUM market share: sustaining the high-60s share protects the core moat.
• CAMS equity AUM: supports asset-based fee growth.
• CAMS live SIP accounts: recurring transactions are one of the highest-quality growth drivers.
• CAMS non-MF revenue share: diversification above 15–20% would reduce concentration in domestic MFs.
• CAMS EBITDA margin: tests whether automation continues to produce operating leverage.

Frequently asked questions