Zerodha the Indian brokerage has done an excellent job over the years building up a massive content library that is now one of its biggest assets. Its blog Z-connect is organised by (investing and trading) topics, its Support portal is full of how-tos about using Zerodha, and its community site Trading QnA now hosts great discussion topics, often with participation from its founder and leadership team.
This means that every time I write to Zerodha for help, their replies are short, with references to a post or a support article that deals with the matter. It’s probably a huge productivity boost for their customer support team. These articles, because they are very topical, often rank high on searches, acting as an automatic acquisition channel.
Like Zappos’ much-vaunted customer service, this sort of moat takes time to build up. It’s not the sort you can throw only money at. It needs time – a commodity even rarer than capital at high-growth companies. But once built, it becomes a vastly more defensible, unique moat than any other.