Groww pays $160M tax as it returns to India amid a startup relocation wave

Indian stock trading and mutual fund startup Groww paid $159.4 million in taxes as it shifted its domicile from the U.S. back to India, the company said in a statement on Monday.

Nearly a dozen Indian startups are in the process of relocating their headquarters to India from the U.S. and Singapore to better comply with Indian laws and facilitate IPOs in the country. The shift in domicile creates a tax event for both investors and the startup.

While the IPO market remains subdued in the U.S. and many developed markets, India has emerged as a hotbed for public offerings this year. The first nine months of 2024 saw almost 70 IPOs in India, already the second-highest number of offerings in any calendar year on record.

One key reason for the influx of startups returning to India is the potential for better analyst coverage, even for companies valued below $2 billion. This coverage is crucial for attracting institutional investors. Hundreds of Indian startups — many of them backed by accelerator Y Combinator — chose to base their headquarters in the U.S. in the past decade.