u/Sufficient-Storage38

Child was born in December last year. My parents gifted ₹2 lakh for her. I want this amount to be used exclusively for her. I was thinking of investing it in the Sukanya Samriddhi Yojana, but ChatGPT says NRIs are not eligible. What other options do I have as NRI so that the money stays locked in, grows, and can be used after she becomes an adult. Thanks in advance for your answers.

I recently moved to UAE and I’m trying to properly restructure my India banking + investing setup as an NRI. I’ve been reading a lot but still confused about practical implementation.
Current setup:
SBI savings account linked to Zerodha, Groww and Sharekhan
ICICI savings account
Axis savings account
Investing in Indian mutual funds and stocks
Planning long-term investing from UAE salary
My planned structure:
Axis → NRE account
SBI → NRO account (main India operational account because all brokers are linked)
ICICI → maybe NRO or secondary account
My doubts:
Is this structure practical or unnecessarily complicated?
Since SBI is linked to Zerodha/Groww/Sharekhan, will converting resident SBI to NRO cause major issues with SIPs, mandates, demat, etc?
Is it better to consolidate all holdings into one broker before NRI conversion?
For NRIs, is Zerodha still practical long term or is Sharekhan/ICICI Direct easier operationally?
If I already have multiple resident savings accounts, do all technically need conversion to NRO/NRE after becoming NRI?
How strict is this practically? Do banks/government actually flag unused resident accounts?
For people earning in AED:

how much do you allocate to Indian mutual funds?
how much to US/global ETFs?
do you invest directly in Indian stocks or mostly index funds?
Is there any major mistake people make during NRI conversion/investing that I should avoid early?
Would appreciate practical advice from Gulf NRIs who already went through this process.