Indian retail investors sent roughly $2.3 billion abroad in the first half of 2026, according to Reserve Bank of India data, as weak domestic equity returns pushed individuals toward global markets and artificial-intelligence-linked stocks. The full-year 2025 figure, a record at the time, stood at $2.65 billion.
Brokerages such as Groww, Zerodha and Angel One have also seen rising client interest in international exposure.
Caps and premiums
Indian rules cap resident individual remittances for foreign investment at $250,000 per person per year. Domestic fund houses face an overall $7 billion limit on total foreign investments, with a $1 billion cap per fund house.
Those constraints have pushed some India-listed foreign-exposure products to trade well above their underlying value. A Motilal Oswal exchange-traded fund tracking the Nasdaq traded at a premium of 65 to 80 percent to net asset value at times in September. Certain Mirae Asset foreign ETFs traded at premiums of 27 to 58 percent.
Diverging markets
The shift reflects a sharp divergence in returns. India’s Nifty 50 index has fallen 5.3 percent over the past two years, while the MSCI Emerging Markets index has risen 47 percent and the S&P 500 has gained 32 percent over the same span.
New domestic securities accounts fell by a quarter in the financial year ending March 2026, to 33 million, even though India still counts more than 130 million retail stock investors. The rupee has hit a record low this year, pressured by institutional selling and energy costs tied to the Iran war. Regulatory sources told Reuters that Indian authorities currently have no plans for restrictive measures to curb the outflows, unlike the tightening approach taken by China.
Source: Reserve Bank of India
