Rohan (name changed) called me from Frankfurt last year, not with an investment question, but a strange confession: “I have a great job, a nice apartment, and I still feel like I’m renting a life.” He wasn’t talking about his flat. He was talking about Germany.
That feeling shows up in some form in almost every conversation I have with NRIs weighing a move back. The Ministry of External Affairs currently counts over 35 million Indians abroad as NRIs, PIOs, and OCIs, and a meaningful share of them are actively thinking about coming home, not because life abroad failed them, but because something at home keeps pulling.
35M+
Indians abroad, per MEA data
78%
10-year Sensex return, among the strongest of major global indices
3-5
Reasons show up in almost every “should I move back” conversation
Must Check – NRI Moving Back to India
Opportunity Has Genuinely Caught Up
Most people went abroad chasing money and a career ceiling India didn’t have twenty years ago. That gap has narrowed. India’s stock market has been one of the stronger performers globally over the past decade, banking, taxation, and digital infrastructure have modernised fast, and the sheer size and youth of the domestic market means a business that would struggle to find footing abroad often has genuine room to grow here.
None of this means Western markets have stopped offering opportunity. It means the gap that once made “staying abroad” the obvious financial choice has closed enough that it’s now a genuine decision, not a foregone conclusion.
Read- NRI Investment Options in India
The Pull Nobody Puts On a Spreadsheet
Most NRIs grew up with cousins in the next building, festivals that filled the whole street, and grandparents who were simply around. Abroad, that requires deliberate effort, and in cities with a thin Indian community, festivals like Holi and Diwali can pass almost unnoticed. Children raised entirely outside India often miss out on music, dance, and language exposure their parents took for granted, and that quiet cultural disconnect is one of the most common reasons parents cite for wanting to return before their kids grow up fully rooted elsewhere.
Check – What will happen to NRE FD after return to India
Being Present While Parents Age
A significant share of NRIs return specifically to be near aging parents, not for a two-week annual visit, but for actual daily presence. Others want their own children to grow up with grandparents in the picture, something that’s genuinely hard to replicate over a video call. This reason rarely shows up in financial planning conversations early, and it should, because it often ends up being the deciding factor regardless of what the numbers say.
Giving Back, and Retiring, on Their Own Terms
Some NRIs who went abroad young and built real wealth feel a pull to give something back, setting up non-profits, funding causes, working with NGOs tackling problems they grew up seeing firsthand. Others are simply working toward a number: stay abroad until the big goals, children’s education, a paid-off house, are handled, then come home and let years of savings fund a genuinely comfortable life in India, where the currency does more work per rupee than it ever did per dollar or pound.
“The pull to return rarely shows up as one big reason. It shows up as five small ones that finally outweigh the comfort of staying.”
Before You Actually Move: The Financial Checklist
Deciding to return is emotional. Executing it well is entirely mechanical, and this is where most NRIs underprepare.
✓ Evaluate genuine job or business opportunities before you land, not after
✓ Convert NRE, NRO, and Demat accounts to resident accounts on schedule
✓ Rebuild your portfolio around Indian tax residency, not your old NRI allocation
✓ Close out every overseas asset, account, and liability, and confirm zero tax exposure abroad before you file your first Indian return
As an NRI, this isn’t an easy decision even when every emotional signal points home. Your life abroad may be comfortable, your family adjusted, your career steady. Weigh the family, cultural, and financial dimensions together, not the financial one alone, because the financial piece is the only one a spreadsheet can actually help with.
Weighing a return to India yourself?
We help NRIs sequence the account conversions, tax residency shift, and portfolio rebuild, before the move, not after.
Apna desh doesn’t ask you to justify wanting to come home. It just asks you to plan the landing properly.
What’s pulling you toward India, or keeping you abroad right now? I’d genuinely like to hear it in the comments.
Suggest a health insurance in India for a 64-year-old man?
I am 68 year Indian who is now Canadian citizen with OCI. Married wife (born in India, grew up in England and work life in Canada). Both retired with 2 kids married and 3 grand-kids. I look after my 96 year Mom here in Canada. I plan to spent my winter time in Goa and return to Canada for few months to meet kids. Long term I plan to be in a senior community near seashore for daily beach walk. The reason is more because of returning back to mother land and to that pavitra soil where we are lucky to be born on. We have already taken the domestic healthcare in India in lieu of our longer stay in India. Financial independence has been achieved and are more focused on our future life with some travel and seeing more of Bharat.
Can you help in filing tax returns in india
My husband and I live in US for the past 41 years. In the beginning we thought we could go back to India after retirement. But after this long that seems to be impossible. Main reason is that our children are well-settled here. We don’t want to leave them. Next reason is…most of our elderly relatives including our parents passed away. There are many other reasons too.
So we decided to stay!
Thanks for sharing…
Other than the post 2014 turn towards cultivating a dominant cultural hegemony of what is referred to as the central India “cow belt” India remains the best country in the world
Many overseas Indians who grew up with the idea of India as envisioned by our freedom fighters and founding fathers including Gandhiji, Nehru, Ambedkar & Sardar Patel are deeply troubled by the new ruling political dispensation because it is attempting to remake India in a certain idealistic image. I have many majority community friends who are resisting a return to India. Some have chosen to emigrate from the Middle East to USA/Canada. Some who can afford have taken the passport from countries like Cyprus and prefer to remain in the Middle East. But the majority do eventually retire to India just like the elephant, seeking familiarity of its own, which is believed to return to die in the place of its birth. The majority may also return because they have lost their jobs.
India’s biggest attraction has always been its rich history of plurality and diversity. There has never been a top down imposition of one language or culture or dharma. Of late we have seen the powers that be seek to juxtapose the liberal idea of India that our Constitutional fathers sought to create with the much narrower ideology of socially conservative groups who are imagining their own construct of one harmonious religious, cultural and political entity which may have existed only in the mythological past 5,000 years ago (or some even say 500,000 years ago) !
In Gujarat for example we see an attempt to undermine the Constititionally enshrined right of the Christian minority to manage its own instititutions. Government there has now taken the view that minority institutions must subject their Principal and teaching staff to Government regulation on recruitment and administration. Why? Are the Church run institutions not imparting a higher quality of education than the other middle class schools receiving normal educational aid ?
The powers that seek to turn multi colour India into monchrome India have spread their tentacles into the North East.So it remains deeply gratifying to see the push back from the southern states of Kerala and Tamil Nadu.
As eminent political strategist Prashant Kishore stated “Other parties want only your vote. The present dispensation wants your very soul”. As long as liberal minded Indians continue to resist the top down imposition of a certain ideology and desired “perfect” culture, India will remain the best country on earth.
Hi Rao,
Thanks for sharing your views. I may not agree with few things that you mentioned but as you said “India’s biggest attraction has always been its rich history of plurality and diversity.” 🙂
Is it possible to transfer pension pot from USA to India?
I know many NRIs who repent their decision of coming back within a month of landing.In last 20 years,There is a paradigm shift in the reason for which people leave India. It was earlier better income and education , and now its pretty much achievable in India . People look for a better system in which every single one matters.Most of my friends left India to raise their kids in a system in which things are justified and you can get justice if you raise your voice.Even though economy is booming ,social harmony is going worse, people are getting political for no reason, killing each other for supporting an ideology .
Thanks for sharing your views but I may not agree with your last line 🙂