How Paasa Is Making Overseas Investing Simpler for Indians
For years, overseas investing has felt less like an opportunity and more like an endurance test for Indian residents. Although the Liberalised Remittance Scheme (LRS) allows individuals to remit up to $250,000 annually, the process has remained tangled in paperwork, compliance checks, opaque fees, and slow settlement cycles.
The gap is becoming harder to ignore. As more Indians look beyond domestic markets for global stocks, ETFs and dollar-denominated assets, they encounter an ecosystem that has not kept pace with their intent. Many high-net-worth individuals hold dollar liabilities yet continue saving largely in rupees a currency that has historically depreciated against the dollar. Layer on the complexity of remittances, tax reporting, and limited clear guidance, and global investing often feels intimidating.
A Personal Problem That Became a Product
This friction was personal for founders Nitish Sahni and Sparsh Sharma. While studying at UC Berkeley, Sahni watched his tuition costs rise about 5% each year as the rupee weakened. Back home, his father struggled to manage overseas investments, relying on intermediaries and navigating compliance hurdles for even basic transactions.
The conclusion was clear: despite rising demand, accessible tools for overseas investing simply did not exist for most Indians.
In 2024, the duo launched Paasa. Drawing on Sahni’s fintech experience at SoFi and Sharma’s engineering background at UiPath and SoFi, along with his training in interaction design, they built a digital wealth platform aimed at removing paperwork, simplifying compliance, and giving Indians a single window into global markets.
How Paasa Works
Gurugram-based Paasa positions itself as a global equities platform designed specifically for Indian investors. Users download the app, complete KYC and open an account. They remit funds in dollars through their Indian banks and transfer them to an Interactive Brokers account—Paasa’s brokerage partner. This setup provides access to major exchanges including NASDAQ and NYSE in the US, as well as markets in London, Switzerland and beyond.
“The experience is essentially like Zerodha, but for global markets,” Sharma says.
Investors can buy individual stocks and ETFs across multiple exchanges. Paasa automates cross-border tax filing and compliance—two of the biggest friction points that have historically discouraged Indians from investing overseas.
The platform is designed to work across demographics. It supports onboarding, reporting, analytics and portfolio tracking through the app, WhatsApp and email. “The experience is suitable even for HNIs who are 50-plus and not digitally native,” Sahni notes, with support handled through familiar channels.
Beyond execution, Paasa offers advisory services. It curates collections of indices, benchmarks and asset classes, then builds portfolios tailored to individual risk profiles—high, medium or low. Using a model portfolio framework with strategic asset allocation and periodic rebalancing, the platform provides updates, reviews and restructuring as goals or market conditions change.
AI-driven insights form a core part of the advisory layer. The system generates personalised reports and actionable insights on holdings. “Our AI scripts analyse customer stocks by tracking news from the past week and explain why prices moved up or down,” Sahni explains.
Investors can choose from three primary strategies: Global Index Tracking for broad diversification, High Growth Equity for return-focused exposure, and Quality Dividend for steady income. Each comes with ready-made portfolios plus guidance on tax-efficient structuring, LRS compliance and RBI reporting.
The founders emphasise proper diversification. “The idea is to ensure assets don’t move in the same direction at the same time. This is the fundamental principle of true global diversification,” Sharma says.
Under the hood, Paasa operates as an infrastructure-led platform. It partners with Interactive Brokers and uses its APIs to create a localised experience. Execution, custody, reporting and compliance run on Interactive Brokers’ global rails, allowing Paasa to focus on product design, advisory and user experience. As a SEBI-registered Investment Advisor, the company states that all investments comply with the RBI’s LRS framework for global equities.
Business Model and Target Users
Paasa earns revenue through a 1% annual fee on assets under management for advisory services, plus transaction-based brokerage fees that vary by exchange. Fees are lower for US exchanges and slightly higher for the London Stock Exchange.
Currency conversion is another area of focus. Banks often apply significant mark-ups on exchange rates. Paasa has negotiated rates around Rs 91.4 per dollar with partner banks. “We don’t make money on forex conversion. By negotiating better rates, we help customers save, which adds up on larger transfers,” Sahni says.
The platform has found strong product-market fit with employees at US tech companies such as Google, Microsoft, Qualcomm and Nvidia. These users face two specific challenges. First is concentration risk: many receive Restricted Stock Units (RSUs), leaving a large portion of their wealth tied to a single company. They want diversification while remaining in dollar-denominated assets rather than converting everything back to India.
Second is the US estate tax issue. US-based securities can face up to 40% estate tax upon the holder’s death. “$1 million in US stocks could mean $400,000 in taxes. Older employees and executives don’t want their stock sitting in US accounts,” Sharma notes.
Paasa’s solution allows investors to buy dollar assets on the London Stock Exchange—such as S&P 500 ETFs. Because these are not US-based holdings, they can avoid the estate tax while retaining similar market exposure.
Growth, Competition and Roadmap
Paasa is backed by Y Combinator and raised $750,000 in its initial funding round. It currently serves around 1,700 users and manages $19 million in total assets—$6 million in advisory AUM and $13 million in trading and brokerage assets.
The company competes with platforms such as Vested Finance and INDmoney in India’s global investment space. It has worked with executives and families from IBM, EY, Google, Microsoft and other organisations.
The startup is doubling down on tech-company employees with RSUs in India, where the potential 40% estate tax creates clear urgency. Paasa already has customers in Dubai, Oman and Thailand. Future plans include multi-currency bank accounts, a bonds platform and cash management solutions.
“The current focus is brokerage and advisory, but the roadmap includes comprehensive wealth management solutions,” Sharma says.
Advice for Investors
The founders caution against relying on social media stock tips. “That advice isn’t personalised; influencers don’t know your goals, risk profile or timeline,” Sahni notes.
They also warn against geographical concentration. Investing only in India or only in the US exposes portfolios to unnecessary risk. “The core idea behind platforms like Paasa is global diversification—across equities, bonds, gold and commodities, and across regions like India, the US, Europe and Asia,” Sharma says.
With rising geopolitical uncertainty, wars and shifting global alliances, spreading investments across multiple markets is increasingly essential for long-term stability.
“Our vision is global; everyone in the world should invest globally, not just Indians or NRIs,” Sahni concludes.
Paasa’s bet is that removing friction—paperwork, compliance, opaque costs and limited guidance—will finally make overseas investing practical for a much wider set of Indian investors.