Zerodha’s Kite Just Opened a Door to 2,000 US Stocks

Zerodha is taking one of its biggest steps beyond Indian equities. The brokerage has launched US stock investing in beta on Kite, allowing resident Indian investors to buy shares in up to 2,000 US-listed companies and around 1,000 exchange-traded funds without leaving the platform they already use for domestic investments.

The service also brings fractional ownership into Kite, with eligible investments starting from as little as $1. Investors can activate the international segment through their existing Zerodha account rather than opening a separate Indian demat account for US securities. Funds are transferred from a linked Indian bank account into a dollar-denominated wallet through net banking.

Zerodha is charging brokerage of 0.1% of transaction value, capped at $10 per executed order, while additional regulatory and foreign-exchange charges apply. The offering is currently limited to delivery-based investing; intraday trades, margin trading and applications for US IPOs are not supported. Eligible stocks and ETFs can also be bought fractionally, and SIP-style investing is available for supported securities.

The infrastructure behind the product runs through BSE’s India INX Global Access framework at GIFT City, with the underlying US securities held through a US brokerage partner. The launch follows regulatory approvals earlier this year that opened the door for Indian brokers including Zerodha, Groww, Upstox and Angel One to expand international-investing access through GIFT City.

Competition is already intensifying. Groww rolled out US investing in September, while Upstox entered with access to more than 8,000 US-listed stocks and over 2,000 ETFs. Zerodha is arriving with a smaller initial universe, but with an important advantage: US holdings now sit inside the same Kite experience used by its existing customers.

For Zerodha, this is less about simply adding another asset class. Kite is gradually shifting from being primarily an Indian-market trading platform toward becoming a broader investing interface — and US equities are now part of that expansion.