Shalini Dhawan answers some vital questions regarding Non-Resident Indians looking at the country as a investment destination.
In a get together with my NRI friends recently, I ran a quick survey. My question was: “As an NRI living overseas, why do you invest in India?” The answers were quite varied. One friend said “My family suggested we buy property in India”, another said “I had made these investments when I last visited India” and some friends were also frank enough to confess that they didn’t really know why they did so.
The above discussions therefore led me to deliberate about the reasons and whether there was any merit in India being an investment destination for NRIs. Let us examine some compelling reasons:
The above list does detail many reasons why India should feature in a NRI’s portfolio, even though one may not really be contemplating moving back to India. All in all India still seems like an investment opportunity worth evaluating.
An India portfolio may also add diversification to a NRI portfolio which may be missing out on opportunities by not adding India oriented investments. And of course, there could be the added element of emotional connect for NRIs investing in India, though in my view that cannot be one of the reasons for this decision.
