UPDATE 1 — Indian brokerage Groww posts higher profit as customers rise

(Adds details from bullet 5) Oct 14 (Reuters) — Groww's parent Billionbrains Garage Ventures reported a 54% rise in second-quarter profit on Wednesday as the Indian online brokerage added more customers. Consolidated net profit rose to 7.26 billion rupees ($76.38 million) for the quarter ended September 30 from 4.71 billion rupees a year earlier. Its revenue from operations rose 47% to 15.02 billion rupees, helped by a 27% growth in total transacting users. However, on a quarter-on-quarter basis, revenue was flat, while profit declined 1.3%, largely due to the impact of the closing auction session (CAS) on the derivatives segment, Groww said. Introduced in August, CAS is a mechanism to determine a stock's closing price by matching buy and sell orders at the end of the trading day, replacing the previous method of using thevolume-weighted average price from the last 30 minutes of trading. The change has increased price volatility around market close, prompting equity derivatives traders to exercise caution and reduce trading activity. Groww's equity derivatives revenue declined 14.3% quarter-on-quarter, the bulk of which was attributed to CAS, it said. To alleviate concerns, India's