No, due to current covid times things are not moving as expected, still waiting for few regulatory approvals.
HDFC has recently started US Investing. Not exactly free but since they are an Indian bank the remittance and other bank charges are waived off for investing via HDFC securities.
I don’t think bank charges (remittances)would be waived . Could you confirm
Hello @nithin sir,
Out of curiosity I’m asking,
Where does the stocks we bought in foreign exchanges sit.
Do they sit in our demat account (cdsl) or we open another account in US
Not in CDSL account, there is no concept of Demat in US, all those will stay with US custodian.
what if the custodian defaults ?
In India , many cases are there where the DP and the trading member (broker) defaults , but stocks are safe as they are with the depository hand and not in the DP hands !!!
Please go through this and sincerely requesting you to put some efforts if you really want to learn more.
@siva
That’s understandable. Still any sort of timeline when we can expect it provided you get all the approvals. Safe to assume by Q3?
As soon as we get RBI approval on remittance thing, hopefully soon.
Read an article on moneycontrol this week and going by that it seems like this remittance part is not going to be resolved soon. 
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okay.
So just trying my luck here, if any tentative dates are there 
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@nithin @siva One way I see the remittance charges issue being resolved is if the money never really get converted from INR to USD. There is a company called Transferwise which does this. They maintain accounts in different countries and when a inter-currency transfer needs to happen, they take the money and deposit it into a local currency bank account in the sender’s country & then according to prevailing currency conversion rate, remit the money from a local currency bank account located in the receiver’s country. This way the money never really gets converted between currencies. A short video by the company explains how it happens https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MLKKzRvOsLQ&t=45
Their fees are around 2.5% for a 1000$ transfer and reduce as the amount increases (around 1.8% for 10,000$) for INR to USD transfers. Their USD to INR transfers is even cheaper with fees hovering around 1%. All these calculations are done using their publically available calculator. One of the thing that I found interesting was that they shared how exactly the fees they charge are used behind the scenes (Wise Fees for Sending Money). According to that, the real cost of currency conversion is only around 1/3 their fees (around 0.65-0.9% for INR to USD & 0.4-0.35% for USD to INR conversion) and remaining 2/3 is used by them (building the product, customer support, office cost, their margin, etc).
Also, seeing a similar opportunity (aka lower currency conversion fees) , recently they announced that they were working on providing investment options for the money deposited with them (This is for people who have multi-currency accounts with them) - https://www.cnbc.com/2020/06/30/fintech-start-up-transferwise-gets-fca-approval-to-offer-investments.html
TransferWise said it expects to launch its first investing feature in the next 12 months. Though the firm is starting with the U.K., it hopes to also roll the product out internationally later down the line.
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Thanks, our team checked on this but there are some compliance issues, anyhow we are checking other routes as well.
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How hard it is to get RBI permission to remit more than 250000 USD per financial year ?
so so anything going on here … is it progressing or this thing is halted for good… ? any updates plz…
Saw this statement from @nithin in a recent article.
Discount broking firm Zerodha, which is India’s largest brokerage in terms of number of active clients, is also working on a similar product and will be launching it soon.
“We are working on it and while it is a good facility to offer, the remittance process could prove to be a dampener in the offering due to the costs involved,” said Nithin Kamath, founder and CEO, Zerodha.
“The remittance process involves a cost and hence there is money lost in that spread. Plus, the budget introduced a TDS (tax deducted at source) for remittances above Rs 7 lakh. There is a view that this product is more suitable for high net worth individuals and a retail investor is better off taking exposure through a mutual fund,” added Kamath.
FDI AND FII investing in India and the Indians want to invest in the foreign markets outside India !
can any1 explain this irony ? 
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