Belong for NRIs

You are an NRI sitting on dollars in Dubai or Singapore, and every route into India seems to come with the same three taxes: a currency that drifts lower against the dollar each year, TDS on your interest, and a repatriation process that feels like a part-time job. GIFT City is India's attempt to answer that, and Belong is one of the newer apps built specifically to get NRIs into GIFT City products. This profile is about what Belong actually does today, not what a young company hopes to become.

The 30-second answer: Belong is a recent NRI-focused fintech, founded in 2024 and based in Bengaluru, built around GIFT City (India's IFSC). Its core pitch is USD fixed deposits through GIFT City units of Indian banks, plus access to GIFT City mutual funds and AIFs, an NRI tax-filing service, and a useful set of free tools and content. The appeal is real: USD-denominated returns, favourable GIFT City tax treatment, and an NRI-first design. The caveats are equally real. It is a newer company, so the things that matter most, which regulated entity holds your money, the exact product terms, and how protection and repatriation work, are things you should verify yourself in-app and in the product documents rather than take from any summary, including this one. The tools and content are low-risk to use now; the investment products deserve the same scrutiny you would give any deposit or fund.

If you are still hazy on how repatriable, tax-efficient money actually flows into India, read the NRE, NRO and FCNR guide first, because GIFT City sits alongside those structures rather than replacing them, and knowing where your money lands matters more than which app you tap.

What Belong actually is

Belong is an app and website aimed squarely at NRIs and OCIs who want to invest into India through GIFT City, Gujarat International Finance Tec-City, which is India's first International Financial Services Centre. The company is led by co-founder and CEO Ankur Choudhary, an IIT Kanpur alumnus and SEBI-registered investment adviser who previously co-founded the investing startup Goalwise, alongside a founding team that includes Savitri Bobde, Ayush Singh and Sai Sankar M. Public reporting describes a seed round of around USD 5 million led by Elevation Capital, with other investors participating. Those are encouraging signals for a company this young, but they are background, not a guarantee.

The product that anchors everything is the GIFT City USD fixed deposit. Belong describes these as deposits placed through GIFT City units of Indian banks, available in US dollars, with smaller ticket sizes and shorter tenures than the traditional FCNR route. Because GIFT City is treated as offshore for many financial purposes, the company highlights USD-denominated returns and favourable tax treatment within the IFSC. Around that sit GIFT City mutual funds and Alternative Investment Funds for those who qualify, an NRI India tax-filing service, and a stack of free tools: an NRI FD comparison tool, a residential status calculator, a compliance compass, and currency and market trackers. It also runs a substantial content library covering NRI banking, investing and tax.

What Belong is not, at least based on what the site shows, is a full NRI bank. It is not an NRE or NRO account provider, and it is not a remittance rail in the way a transfer app is. It is a route into a specific set of GIFT City products, wrapped in tools and education. Hold that distinction in mind, because it determines where Belong fits in your setup.

Who it is for

Belong suits the NRI who has already heard about GIFT City and wants a single, NRI-first place to actually access it, rather than piecing it together through individual bank branches. If your money is in dollars, you are wary of rupee depreciation, and a USD fixed deposit with GIFT City tax treatment sounds like the right shape for part of your savings, this is the kind of platform built for exactly that conversation. The free tools and content also make it genuinely useful even before you invest a rupee: the FD comparison tool, the residential-status calculator and the tax content are worth a look regardless of whether you open an account.

It is a weaker fit if you want core NRI banking, an NRE or NRO account, day-to-day remittances, or a long, established track record before you commit. AIFs in particular carry high minimums and suit high-net-worth investors, not first-timers. And if your instinct is to wait until a platform has years of history behind it, that is a perfectly reasonable instinct to apply to a 2024-founded company. There is no harm in using the tools now and revisiting the products later.

The honest read

Belong is doing something genuinely useful: making GIFT City, which has historically been the preserve of HNIs and private bankers, approachable for ordinary NRIs, with a clean app and a strong content and tools layer. The GIFT City proposition itself, USD returns and favourable IFSC tax treatment, is real and not marketing invention. The honest caveat is simply maturity. This is a newer company, so the decision is less about the app and more about the underlying product: which regulated entity actually holds your deposit, what protection applies, and how repatriation works in practice. Read the product documents, confirm the IFSCA-regulated entity, and do not size a commitment past your comfort with a young platform.

For context, weigh Belong against other NRI-focused platforms such as SBNRI and GoinRI, which cover overlapping ground, and if your bigger question is how mainland Indian investing works for NRIs, start with the NRI mutual fund eligibility guide before deciding how much of your portfolio belongs in GIFT City at all. Used for its tools and content today, and approached carefully on the products, Belong earns a place on the shortlist; it just has not yet earned the benefit of the doubt that a longer track record buys.