I'm Viram Shah, Co-Founder & CEO at Vested Finance. Ask me anything!

@salt Ah on 1, the answer really depends on a lot of factors, for e.g. what is the craft exactly or at what age or what kind of environments does the person like living in. Now if one is say a sommelier, I would say definitely can look at moving to the US because the opportunities in India are super limited. But, if you are looking for opportunities in technology or manufacturing then the next couple of decades in India will also bring a lot of opportunities so its not as straightforward an answer.

Other aspects to consider are - as a person do you want to be close to family and friends or do you like a more community-driven society (India) vs. a more individual-centric one (US). Are you ok letting go of the convenience in India for a higher quality of city life in the US.

For me personally, I always wanted to contribute to the India growth story and be close to family and friends. Hence the decision of moving back post the MBA. Because of Vested though I do get to stay in touch with developments in the US, which I like because no matter what is happening in the country, there is a lot to learn from it.

2. So, the US stock market unlike in India follows a custodian model wherein there's no NSDL/CDSL but instead a custodian that holds the shares in name of the broker (called 'in street name'). In our case the custodian is Citibank who holds trillions of $$. Drivewealth who is our clearing broker i.e. our interface with the custodian is regulated by FINRA. We as Vested are also an introducing broker registered with FINRA. So you are essentially interfacing only with regulated entities throughout. If everything in the chain fails, each account is insured by SIPC (Securities Investor Protection Corporation) up to $500,000. So that's the fallback in the worst case scenario. Hope that helps!

So stocks are held with Drivewealth or CitiBank ?
Sorry I am noob, but if Drivewealth files bankruptcy, my stocks are still safe and I can sell them ?

@ClassicNail Didn't know there would be so many regulations when we started...Kidding. In abiding by regulation and still creating value lies the opportunity to build something unique :)

Do I need my Aadhar to be linkedin to phone number to be on Vested? That's stupid. Hope there's another way as well. I have stopped taking domestic flights because of the same issue

@championswimmer Arnav! Good to see you here as well. We are internally testing an overhaul of the UX, will reach out to add you to the beta. Would be great to get feedback. The overhaul is bringing back the portfolio graph too!

@CuriousSaucy Hmm, our core business is providing Indians access to global assets and because of that there are some differences like we are directly regulated by US regulators, offer a less cluttered experience, customer service trained in depth on international investing, pre-built portfolios via Vests, OTC stocks, etc. You will also see more global asset classes on Vested very soon that will allow investors to build a more robust global portfolio

@DaringTrain There is an inheritance tax if the holding is above $60k I think. We are looking to launch joint accounts soon that could help with this

On the RBI limit, nope that doesn't impact us since that's for domestic mutual funds. We operate under the Liberalized Remittance Scheme of the RBI which allows you to remit up to $250k per individual per year for various purposes like travel, education and investing