Investing in India from abroad: Navigating financial hurdles for NRIs

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based in Singapore, experienced numerous challenges while managing his investments as an NRI. Having a portfolio before moving to Singapore in 2019, he had to convert his resident demat account to NRI. The extensive documentation required by the broker demanded significant time and effort.

“Extensive documentation required at Zerodha felt like a never-ending task to me. It involved a significant amount of paperwork and time. But the real challenge came with the need for attestation by a legal or gazetted officer.

Getting documents signed at the Indian embassy in Singapore was prohibitively expensive," he says. The attestation process required for the account conversion process in India also posed a major obstacle, as most local authorities were unaware of the process. “I had to plan my attestations for when I visited India.

However, finding lawyers in tier 3 cities who were familiar with this process was tough. Fortunately, my cousin, who works at the district court, came to my rescue and helped me with the attestation. Without his help, I might still be struggling with this step," he adds.

Even after the demat account conversion from resident to NRI was completed, Veera had to manually adjust or frequently follow up with the broker to get accurate transaction prices, which took almost three months. Akarsh Aggarwal, a software engineer based in Singapore, faced similar issues. It took several months to convert his demat account from resident to NRI.

“It has been a painful journey. It took me almost nine months after trying to reach out to Zerodha. I did not face any issues with documentation, but the lack of support from customer service made it difficult," says Aggarwal.