Indian investors can now directly invest in US-listed stocks like Apple, Microsoft via NSE IX

A key feature of the Global Access platform is the ability to execute fractional trades, allowing investors to purchase portions of high-priced global stocks rather than entire shares.

• NSE IX Global Access to enable Indians to trade in 30+ markets soon
• US market access is live; more markets to follow in 6 months
• Platform offers fractional investing in equities, ETFs only

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NSE International Exchange (NSE IX) will allow Indian retail investors to trade across more than 30 international markets over the coming six months through its Global Access platform, with the United States as the first phase of the rollout already rolled out, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer V Balasubramaniam said.

Speaking to Moneycontrol in an interview, Balasubramaniam described the initiative as a structural expansion of investor access beyond domestic markets.

“To begin with, immediately we have gone live for the US markets, which is the bigger market of interest. But over a period of time, I think we are going to, in the next three to six months, we should have more than 30 markets available for access to people,” he told Moneycontrol.

Outbound investments under LRS framework

The Global Access platform has been designed to facilitate outbound investments within the regulatory framework of the Liberalised Remittance Scheme (LRS) of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), under which resident individuals are permitted to remit up to 250,000 US dollars per financial year for permitted transactions, including overseas investments.

Balasubramaniam emphasised that the entire transaction cycle – from onboarding to trading – has been structured to remain compliant with prevailing regulations. “This entire investment will happen under the Liberalised Remittance Scheme, which RBI allows. Every individual investor, in a single year, can remit up to 250,000 dollars,” he said.

Fractional investing for retail participants

A key feature of the Global Access platform is the ability to execute fractional trades, allowing investors to purchase portions of high-priced global stocks rather than entire shares.

Balasubramaniam said this functionality would be particularly relevant for retail investors seeking exposure to global technology majors. “For retail investors, they can even do value-based buying or fractionalised buying. For example, Apple is 272 dollars. If we have 31 dollars in this account, we can fractionalise it,” he said.

“So, you can say, I want to buy five dollars’ worth of Apple. You can get five dollars’ worth of Apple. You can get a fractionalised part, and it will be available in your portfolio,” he added.

The fractionalisation facility is enabled through arrangements with foreign broker partners, allowing value-based execution without requiring large ticket sizes.

Dollar-denominated investment structure

Balasubramaniam noted that investments executed through the platform will be denominated in US dollars. “All these investments will happen in dollars. So, the first thing is, the rupee money from India will be going in a foreign remittance and it will come into a dollar,” he said.

The platform is accessible via web and mobile interfaces. According to Balasubramaniam, the onboarding process has been built around digital verification systems widely used in Indian financial markets.

“Once you create your account, you can do online digital KYC. It takes only 30 to 45 seconds to completely do that KYC. It will be through your Aadhaar authentication and PAN card. Even through your DigiLocker, it can be done,” he said.

After completing verification, investors can remit funds to a designated GIFT City bank account linked to the trading infrastructure. “As soon as you remit the money, on your app, you will get the limits. You will get what is your trading power, what is the limit. After that, you can start putting buy orders and sell orders,” Balasubramaniam explained.

He added that the platform allows investors to create customised watchlists and track global securities. “You can create multiple market watches. Effectively, you can create any of the global companies which you would like,” he said.

Investment in global equities and ETFs

Balasubramaniam clarified that the product universe on the platform will remain restricted to asset classes permitted under LRS rules.

“In the LRS, there are certain restrictions. What we are allowing is equities. We will allow you ETFs. All these products are available on this particular platform,” he said.

He added that derivatives and digital asset products have not been enabled. “For obvious reasons, we have not enabled digital assets, cryptos, and all that, because that is not allowed under the LRS framework. Derivatives are not allowed. So, derivatives are not allowed. Secondly, we will not allow any kind of crypto or digital asset product,” he said.

Institutional participation in later phases

While the current phase targets resident individual investors, NSE IX indicated that institutional participation could be incorporated at a later stage.

“At some point of time, in phase three, we will also enable it for our institutional investors in India. Today you are seeing a lot of big mutual funds which are coming up with outbound investment schemes. Even those schemes can become our customers,” Balasubramaniam said.

GIFT Nifty liquidity and turnover scale

Highlighting the scale of trading activity at NSE IX, Balasubramaniam said volumes in its flagship GIFT Nifty derivatives contract have expanded sharply following the migration of offshore trading.

“Today, on average, I can say that we trade almost 100 billion dollars plus every month, working out to over 5 billion dollars average daily trading volume,” he said.

Strategic positioning of NSE IX

Balasubramaniam reiterated the broader vision for the exchange within India’s international financial centre framework. “Our vision statement is very simple. We want to become the preferred financial gateway to bring inbound investments into India and to also enable outbound investments to the rest of the world,” he said.

The expansion of outbound investment access at GIFT City aligns with India’s broader efforts to deepen the International Financial Services Centre ecosystem and channel cross-border investment flows through domestic financial infrastructure.