What happened
Until recently, getting into U.S. stocks and ETFs from India largely meant being wealthy and going through global banks or wealth managers. That gate is swinging open.
Groww began enabling U.S. equity trades earlier this month. The company says its platform makes up just over 29% of India's 46 million active brokerage investors, and it now lets users trade over 10,000 U.S. stocks, ETFs, and even fractional shares. Early activity on Groww is gravitating to NVIDIA, SpaceX, Apple, Alphabet, Amazon, Micron and Meta, according to Harsh Jain, the firm's chief operating officer and co-founder.
Zerodha, the second largest platform with 15% of active clients per NSE, has begun beta testing U.S. stock access and told CNBC it aims to launch broadly within a few weeks. Another major broker, Angel One, which serves 6.7 million active retail clients, is also reportedly planning to add U.S. trading.
Why demand is picking up
"There has always been latent demand in India for investing in global companies," said Zerodha's Somnath Mukherjee, who is the vice president of corporate development. He pointed to recent underperformance in domestic equities, the absence of homegrown artificial intelligence leaders, and the rupee's slide versus the dollar as reasons investors want some holdings in another currency.
Kotak Mahindra Asset Management Singapore's Nitin Jain described "big interest" from Indians in buying U.S. equities - especially tech - and added that "retail investors like whatever goes up." The backdrop helps explain the shift: the Nifty 50 is down nearly 13% year to date while the S&P 500 has risen over 12%. Foreign investors have pulled a record $32.5 billion from Indian direct equities since January, NSDL data show, and with no major local AI names and valuations seen as rich, experts say investors have favored markets like South Korea and Taiwan over India.
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The flow of money
Outward investing is rising from the retail side too. According to the central bank, in August, resident Indians remitted more than $321 million for equity and debt investments abroad - an increase of 111% from a year prior. For the financial year ended March 2026, those investment remittances totaled $2.6 billion. Tanvi Kanchan of Anand Rathi Shares & Stock Brokers said investments now account for roughly 11.7% of all outward remittances, compared with 5.8% a year earlier.
Kanchan cautioned that while retail outflows are still small versus India's foreign exchange reserves, they tend to increase when the rupee is weak and U.S. markets are strong, which can "amplify pressure at the worst moment." The rupee has already felt strain from foreign investor exits and higher energy costs tied to the Iran war, prompting central bank action.
What it means for your portfolio
Access is improving and choices are widening, but so are the moving parts. Kotak's Jain warned regulators could have "second thoughts" about permitting retail participation in U.S. markets as the numbers swell. In plain English: expanding cross border tools adds currency exposure, different market cycles and policy risk to weigh alongside the appeal of U.S. tech leaders and diversification.
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