Indian diaspora

Who's the one who can demand your rupee? The foreign investor who wants to buy your shares.

India has so many NRIs, millions of them, particularly in the wealthy parts in the US, for example, 5 million NRIs.

Even if 10% of those 5 million NRIs come to India, they would add 0.8% to India's GDP every year.

Sir John Templeton very famously said, There are five words in the field of investment which are extremely important.

And of the five words, four words you hear loud and clear all the time.

India, our own Indian origin people, I mean, of course, if President Trump has his way, then all the Canadians will also become Americans.

But as of now, they're two different nations.

But India has so many NRIs, millions of them, particularly in the wealthy parts in the US, for example, 5 million NRIs.

Reverse osmosis, it came from this whole, I mean, people have spoken about it, biscellarization of water, right? I mean, this whole dream of that turquoise or green colour Bisleri, you know, bottle, right? I mean, this whole dream which was sold in the 80s and 90s.

NRIs, you know, coming to India and going for Bisleri and then it becomes democratised.

Everybody can afford that Bisleri water.

You too

Yeah, you're right.

That has been a tough part about investing in India is how do you get the money out? Well, traditionally, NRIs investing back in India face strict lock-in periods, annual limits when repatriating funds out of standard non-resident ordinary or NRO bank accounts.

Investing through a gift city structure gives NRIs a mechanism for seamless, unrestricted capital repatriation in foreign currency, bypassing those traditional NRO limitations.

So that's the first big insight here is you're eliminating the traditional NRO limitations and initial caps on repatriation.

Interesting.

And to see why, you have to follow the money.

So an FCNRB deposit is a dollar-term deposit that an NRI keeps with an Indian bank.

The NRI gets repaid in dollars, so if the rupee falls, the bank takes the hit.

Hedging that risk usually costs enough that this money isn't worth chasing.

So in June, with the rupee under pressure, RBI took that cost on itself.

RBI shut the window a month early and nearly half the money came in the last 10 days.

The final count was around $133 billion, roughly five times what RBI's last such window in 2013 managed.

Now $133 billion of NRI deposits sounds like NRIs moving their savings home.

Yeah.

when they start rolling out like in the EO that only CTPAT brokers are going to be able to wrap NRIs.

And by the way, your license and your CTPAT certifications on the line, if you do it and you get it wrong, I mean, I think they're trying to advertise it as an incentive.

If I'm a broker, I'm not going to go there.

Like that's just it.

And, and.

Or we don't want NRIs at all.

Or we don't want

So the best reason to think it won't depreciate more is, one, uh, you've had this successful overseas bond issue.

NRI bond issue, right? What do you call it? The, the NRI bond issue.

I've forgotten the name.

The government-

Bonds.

No.

The, uh, you know, the bond issue targeting NRI money.

Hmm.