The country’s own mutual funds have also increasingly sought to invest their customers’ money overseas. That is almost 40 percent higher than the figure for 2020-21 and nearly six times the $292m that Indians invested abroad in real estate, deposits, debt and equity in 2014-15, when the current government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi came to power, promising to turn the country into a magnet for global wealth. In the 2021-22 financial year, Indians ploughed $1.69bn directly into foreign bank deposits, equity and debt instruments, and buying property outside the country, according to the Reserve Bank of India (RBI).

Wealthy Indians are investing abroad at record rates, data from the country’s central bank reveals. They confirmed: they too were receiving similar guidance. Then, Ranjan called his friends to check what their advisers were telling them. “I couldn’t believe what they were saying, so I asked them to repeat it,” he recalled. But earlier this year, the advice changed dramatically: Ranjan, they said, should invest 20 percent of his portfolio outside India. For years, financial advisers had recommended only homegrown investment options to the Indian tech entrepreneur and angel investor.

Money magnet