Find Indian Stocks on Zerodha Markets

Purpose

Look up Indian stocks (and related instruments) listed on the NSE/BSE by searching for a company name or ticker on Zerodha Markets, and return the matching listed entities with their trading symbol and exchange. This skill is read-only — no login, no orders. The fastest reliable path is the JSON search endpoint that the page itself calls (/markets/stocks/search/?q=<query>), which returns a clean, structured list of matches; scripted browsing is only a fallback.

When to Use

A user wants to find an Indian stock by company name or partial ticker (e.g. "find Reliance stocks", "what's the NSE symbol for Tata Motors?").
You need to resolve a company name to its trading symbol + exchange (NSE/BSE) before doing anything else (charting, quoting, deeper research).
You need to enumerate the family of listed entities under a brand (e.g. all "Reliance"/"Tata"/"HDFC" companies).
You need the canonical Zerodha Markets stock-page URL for a company.

Not for: placing orders, portfolio access, or live tick-by-tick quotes (live price is rendered client-side — see Gotchas).

Workflow

Recommended method — call the JSON search endpoint directly (fetch). The search box on https://zerodha.com/markets/stocks/ is powered by search.js, which issues a single GET to a JSON endpoint. Hit it directly instead of driving the UI.

Issue a GET request:
```
GET https://zerodha.com/markets/stocks/search/?q=<url-encoded-query>
Example: https://zerodha.com/markets/stocks/search/?q=reliance
```
No authentication, cookies, or special headers are required. Residential proxies are not needed — the endpoint returns 200 application/json directly.

Parse the JSON. The response has five arrays:

{ "companies": [...], "brands": [...], "index": [...], "ETFs": [...], "MFs": [...] }

For "find Indian stocks", the companies array is the primary result. Each row:

{ "display_name": "Reliance Industries", "slug": "reliance-industries-limited",
  "symbol": "RELIANCE", "exchange": "NSE", "category": "brands" }

Map each match to its canonical Zerodha Markets page URL (pattern derived from search.js):
- Stock → https://zerodha.com/markets/stocks/{exchange}/{symbol}/ (e.g. /markets/stocks/NSE/RELIANCE/)
- ETF → https://zerodha.com/markets/etf/{exchange}/{symbol}/
- Mutual fund → https://zerodha.com/markets/mutual-fund/{symbol}/
- Index → https://zerodha.com/markets/indices/{display_name}
Return the matches (display name, symbol, exchange, slug, and the constructed URL). If all arrays are empty, return an empty result set with count: 0 — that is a valid "no matches" outcome, not an error.

Browser fallback

If the JSON endpoint is ever unavailable, drive the page UI:

browse open https://zerodha.com/markets/stocks/ --remote
browse wait load
Type the query into the search input: selector #search (placeholder "Search Stocks or Brands...").
browse wait timeout 2000 — results animate into #search_results.
Read the rendered rows (each links to /markets/stocks/{exchange}/{symbol}/). Filter tabs ("All" / "Companies") sit above the results.

This returns the same data the JSON endpoint provides, just slower.

Site-Specific Gotchas

The search API is NOT Cloudflare-gated. The pre-run probe flags cloudflare + cloudflare-waf on the zerodha.com root homepage, but the /markets/stocks/ subsite and its /markets/stocks/search/ JSON endpoint return 200 cleanly with or without residential proxies/verified stealth. Don't waste a residential-proxy budget on this endpoint.
Empty result is HTTP 200, not 404. A no-match query (e.g. ?q=zzzqxqx) returns {"companies":[], "brands":[], "index":[], "ETFs":[], "MFs":[]} with status 200. Treat empty arrays as "no matches", never as an error.
exchange is per-row and can be NSE or BSE. Don't assume NSE for every result; read the field. Build the stock-page URL from the row's own exchange+symbol.
Brand vs. ticker noise. Searching a brand term (e.g. reliance) returns the whole family of related listed companies (RELIANCE, RPOWER, RELINFRA, RIIL, RCOM, …), not just the flagship. The flagship usually carries "category": "brands". Filter on display_name/symbol if the user wanted one specific company.
category field is sparse. Most rows have "category": ""; only marquee/brand entries get "brands". Don't rely on it for filtering — use symbol/display_name.
Live price is client-side. The individual stock detail page (/markets/stocks/NSE/RELIANCE/) renders the current price, % change, and intraday range via JavaScript/websocket — the static HTML shows -- placeholders. Market cap appears server-side, but a live quote requires a real browser render, not a static fetch. This skill is about finding stocks (resolving name→symbol→exchange); for a live quote, open the detail page in a browser.
Single-token queries work (e.g. ?q=hd returns HDFCBANK, HDFCLIFE, …) — no minimum length enforced in testing.
"Powered by Tijori" — the data/UI is supplied by Tijori Finance; the response shape is stable JSON but is not a publicly documented/contracted API, so treat field availability defensively.

Expected Output

Matches found:

{
  "success": true,
  "query": "reliance",
  "count": 8,
  "results": [
    { "display_name": "Reliance Industries", "symbol": "RELIANCE", "exchange": "NSE", "slug": "reliance-industries-limited", "url": "https://zerodha.com/markets/stocks/NSE/RELIANCE/" },
    { "display_name": "Reliance Power", "symbol": "RPOWER", "exchange": "NSE", "slug": "reliance-power-limited", "url": "https://zerodha.com/markets/stocks/NSE/RPOWER/" },
    { "display_name": "Reliance Infra", "symbol": "RELINFRA", "exchange": "NSE", "slug": "reliance-infrastructure-limited", "url": "https://zerodha.com/markets/stocks/NSE/RELINFRA/" }
  ],
  "error_reasoning": null
}

No matches (still a success):

{
  "success": true,
  "query": "zzzqxqx",
  "count": 0,
  "results": [],
  "error_reasoning": null
}

Endpoint/page error (rare):

{
  "success": false,
  "query": "reliance",
  "count": 0,
  "results": [],
  "error_reasoning": "Search endpoint returned non-200 / non-JSON response."
}

find-indian-stocks