Rishabh Shroff, partner at law firm Cyril Amarchand Mangaldas, explains why high-net-worth individuals (HNWIs) are acquiring foreign passports and moving their wealth out of India.
Rishabh Shroff, partner at Cyril Amarchand Mangaldas, explained why the country’s richest people are moving abroad despite India’s fast-growing economy. In a session ‘A Case for Tomorrow’, moderated by Business Today editor Siddharth Zarabi, Shroff explained why high-net-worth individuals (HNWIs) are increasingly taking foreign passports and transferring their wealth abroad.
He said that even though the number of people moving out of the country’s population of 1.7 billion may seem small, their impact is big. These people are business leaders, job creators and big taxpayers. Their departure is raising serious questions on wealth management, business opportunity and economic policy in India.
During the discussion, Siddharth Zarabi said that doing business in India has become easier than before, yet many second generation business families and rich people are moving abroad. To this Shroff replied, ‘I don’t remember the exact figure, but in 2023-24, about 7,000 people left India. These are those 1% or even 1% of 1%. These people are taking passports in Dubai, Singapore, America and UK.’
He also told that US President Donald Trump launched the ‘Golden Card’ scheme, which was specially designed to give citizenship or residency to people who invest there.
According to Shroff, the biggest reason is ‘global diversification’. Many rich people of India want to exit the country’s financial market and invest in private debt, cryptocurrency, and tech stocks like Meta-Google. But India’s regulatory system prevents them from doing so.
He said, ‘No matter how diverse your portfolio is – equity, debt, real estate – everything is limited to India. But these people want a global footprint.’
This is why many rich Indians are opening ‘family offices’ in Dubai and Singapore, where financial regulations are more flexible. Some families are even shifting their next generation heirs to these countries, so that they can handle the investment opportunities there.