Stockal’s US Investing Platform Enters India, Partners With HDFC Securities

Fintech firm Stockal has launched its global investment platform for Indian investors. This will give a single window to Indian investors looking to invest in multiple global financial markets, starting with the US.

In India, Stockal just completed its first major partnership with HDFC Securities to make global investing more accessible to Indian investors. As part of the relationship, HDFC Securities has introduced GlobalInvesting.in, a US investment platform for its retail customers.

Nandkishore Purohit, Head of Digital Strategy & Analytics, at HDFC Securities, said, "Indian investors have been looking for ways to participate in global financial markets. Our partnership with Stockal helps serve this demand and also, this falls in line with our ideology of providing diversified areas of investment to our customers. We want our customers to ride on global growth stories and create a portfolio that benefits from both the Indian & US markets. Being a completely digital platform, we strongly believe that customers will easily warm up to its user-friendly interfaces and will appreciate the simplicity of the investing process. We are excited about collaborating with Stockal and believe that there are many milestones waiting for us to be achieved.

Vinay Bharathwaj, Founder and MD, at Stockal, said, “We are delighted to work with HDFC Securities in opening up cross-border investing horizons for Indians. HDFC Securities’ scale and reach, and the trust that its customers put in its services is enormous. The Stockal platform has been built keeping the end client at the centre and with HDFC Securities as a partner, we are sure this will positively impact lakhs of investors over time. We have assembled the most relevant ecosystem players on the Stockal platform to make sure Stockal is able to serve a variety of investor needs in India.”

US stock markets are home to some of the fastest-growing companies in the world. However, investing in these companies is far from easy. Currently, diversifying wealth outside of local markets, and across asset classes is cumbersome and expensive. Stockal’s AI-enabled platform curates personalized investing ideas and insights, automates portfolio monitoring, and executes the trade. Stockal makes global investing almost as straightforward as investing in local markets.

Commenting on Stockal’s overall mission, Sitashwa Srivastava, Founder and CEO, Stockal said “Stockal has gotten off to a very good start in India. We are already signing up thousands of users and opening hundreds paid of accounts every week. And have nearly $75 million in the asset pipeline. Markets like the US give stable and sometimes generous returns at lower volatility than emerging markets. We believe every investor should diversify geographically. We’ve also made it our mission to make sure all investors are able to participate in the growth of companies they love. Anywhere in the world!”

With a topsy-turvy local market, the space for global investing from India is getting very interesting. Additionally, the need to reduce currency risk and the fact that Indians sent more than $10 billion in 2018-19 overseas (RBI data for Liberalized Remittance Scheme) for reasons like education, travel and supporting family members, points to the growing need to maintain savings and investments in mature markets.

And this looks like a permanent trend, the global mass affluent (or middle class) population is growing rapidly. It was 27 per cent of the total global population in 2009 and is expected to become 58 per cent by 2030. Which means, more and more people will need to save money locally, as well as across borders – because that is how they will spend it.

In India, there are about 40 million households with income between Rs 10 lakh and 50 Lakh; and 9 million with income above Rs 20 lakh. They are also urban or semi-urban by location and they relate to global products very well.

Sitashwa adds, “Alongside India, we are working on markets like Middle East, Indonesia, Malaysia and a few others which are similar in nature in many ways. Stockal is already available in the Middle East and will be present in many emerging economies over the next 2-3 years.”

While many users are opening Stockal accounts directly, the Stockal Platform is also being integrated with marquee fintech firms in the banking and wealth management space to give broad access to a large population of investors. More announcements are expected to happen soon.