Major Indian online investment platforms are unlocking access to U.S. stocks for millions of retail investors eager to diversify into global assets as the country's markets continue to underperform.

Earlier, access to U.S. markets and exchange-traded funds was limited to wealthier Indians, via global banks and wealth management firms.

Groww, an Indian investment platform that accounts for more than 29% of the country's 46 million active investors across stock brokerages, rolled out the U.S. equity trading feature earlier this month, Harsh Jain, chief operating officer and co-founder of the company, told CNBC.

NVIDIA, SpaceX, Apple, Alphabet, Amazon, Micron and Meta are the most popular companies among early users, Jain said, whose firm has provided access to more than 10,000 U.S. stocks, exchange-traded funds and fractional share ownership.

Zerodha, the second-largest trading platform with a 15% share of active clients as per NSE data, has also started beta testing access to U.S. stocks and plans to launch in a few weeks, the company told CNBC.

Another popular brokerage with 6.7 million active retail clients, Angel One, is also reportedly planning to launch U.S. stock trading on its platform.

There is a "big interest" among Indians to invest in U.S. stocks, especially in tech companies, Nitin Jain, chief executive and director at Kotak Mahindra Asset Management Singapore, told CNBC. He added that "retail investors like whatever goes up," pointing to the frenzy among Indian investors for investing in crypto a few years back.

U.S. stocks in demand

"There has always been latent demand in India for investing in global companies," Somnath Mukherjee, vice president of corporate development at Zerodha, told CNBC.

He said that the underperformance of the Indian stock market over the past few years and the lack of local artificial intelligence champions is driving the demand for U.S offerings. The depreciation of the Indian rupee against the dollar is also pushing investors "to keep a part of their portfolio in another currency," Mukherjee said.

India's benchmark stock index, the Nifty 50, has dropped nearly 13% since the start of the year while the S&P 500 has gained over 12%. Foreign investors are fleeing the country's markets, with a record $32.5 billion in outflows in direct equities since January, as per data from Indian depository NSDL, pressuring the stock market.

With the absence of any major AI company and relatively expensive valuations, investors have picked markets such as South Korea and Taiwan over India, experts said.

In August, resident Indians sent over $321 million overseas for investing in equity and debt, up 111% from a year ago, according to the Indian central bank's data. In the financial year ended March 2026, outward remittances for investments in equity and debt stood at $2.6 billion.

While the retail outflows are a small fraction of India's currency reserves, the worry is that they rise exactly when the rupee is weak, and US markets look strong, and thereby "amplify pressure at the worst moment," Tanvi Kanchan, associate director, head of international business and strategy, Anand Rathi Shares & Stock Brokers said.

Investment now accounts for about 11.7% of total outward remittances, up from 5.8% a year ago, so Indians are shifting from spending abroad to investing abroad, Kanchan said.

The exit of foreign investors and rising energy bills due to the Iran war have already hit the Indian currency, warranting the central bank to step in. Kotak's Jain cautioned that as participation increases, the Indian regulator could have "second thoughts" around allowing retail access to U.S. markets.