No, Zerodha cannot combine all apps into one universal app. While all products fall under the investment tech umbrella, they differ considerably in purpose, technology and target audiences. Combining them would create a cluttered experience and technical complications.
Business reasons
Kite, the trading platform, is built for fast intraday trading where uptime is critical due to its real-time nature. Coin, the mutual fund platform, is built for passive investment. They have different screens, buttons, toggles, icons and other visual elements (UI) and user experience (UX). Both apps target different market segments. Combining them would clutter the app with information, features and buttons that may only be applicable to some market segments.
Active traders access Kite for several hours daily, while mutual fund investors open the Coin app at leisure. The business use cases and UX on these two applications are fundamentally different, and to a large extent, so are the target markets.
Keeping these products separate and giving them individual identities allows for constant improvement without worrying about other products. All applications are deep-linked to keep things user-friendly. They all have a single login and are linked to each other in the proper contexts.
This approach enables Zerodha to build the plug-and-play Kite Connect ecosystem, which allows Zerodha, aspiring developers and startups to be creative with new products. They plug into the ecosystem seamlessly without disrupting the core applications. Smallcase, Streak and Sensibull are all applications built by different companies. They are free to build and run their businesses as they see fit through this plug-and-play model.
Technical reasons
The underlying technologies, stacks and infrastructure required for Kite and Coin differ. Kite may receive several updates per day internally, whereas Coin may receive updates once every week. If they were one app, every time something changed, the entire application would have to be updated for everyone, which is impractical.
If you reported a bug with Coin and the applications were combined, it would affect trading on Kite. Adding features would be highly complex, and the number of new unknown pathways where something can go wrong would be high.