Seventeen months ago, Simran Kaur travelled to India with Christopher Luxon as part of a delegation the prime minister said would help “profile the best and brightest among Kiwi-Indians”.

Next month, the 29-year-old millionaire entrepreneur is leaving for New York.

Kaur, who came to New Zealand from India aged two and built the financial education company Friends That Invest from Auckland, has been granted a US O-1 visa for people with “extraordinary ability or achievement”.

She told the NZ Herald the move was partly about taking her business closer to its biggest market. But she also acknowledged the uncomfortable contradiction of becoming part of the very exodus of talented young New Zealanders she would rather not see happen.

“I do feel a little bit guilty leaving New Zealand,” she said.

“There are some complicated feelings around that when you don’t want the brain drain to happen, but then you’re also part of it.”

Kaur’s departure is particularly striking because she is exactly the sort of success story New Zealand has been keen to celebrate.

When Luxon announced his March 2025 trip to India, he said he would be accompanied by one of the largest delegations ever taken overseas by a New Zealand prime minister.

Alongside senior business leaders and politicians was what the government described as a first-of-its-kind delegation of prominent Kiwi-Indians.

Luxon said it would highlight the importance of New Zealand’s people-to-people links with India and “profile the best and brightest among Kiwi-Indians”. Kaur was among them.

At the time, she posted publicly about accompanying the prime minister to India. Luxon responded: “So glad to have you along Simran – it’s going to be an important week!”

There was plenty on Kaur’s CV by then to justify her place. She founded Girls That Invest, since renamed Friends That Invest, during the first Covid lockdown in 2020 after graduating in optometry from the University of Auckland.

What began as a podcast with a friend, aimed at making investing less intimidating for women, grew into an international financial education business spanning podcasts, social media, online courses and a bestselling book.

By 2023, Kaur had made the Forbes 30 Under 30 list. A year later she was named Young New Zealander of the Year. By her mid-20s, she was already a millionaire.

Last year, Friends That Invest made Deloitte’s Fast 50, placing it among New Zealand’s fastest-growing companies. Kaur says the business is run by a team of just three women in Auckland.

None of this makes her departure a straightforward story about someone who could not make it in New Zealand. Quite the opposite.

Kaur lives on the same North Shore street as her parents. She still goes to the same dairy and sees friends she has known since primary school. At one point while building her business, she moved back in with her parents, giving herself something many young entrepreneurs do not have: room to take a risk without quite as much financial risk.

New Zealand, by her own account, has been very good to her. Perhaps that is partly the problem.

Kaur described her life here as a “little cocoon” and said moving to New York was partly about deliberately stepping outside it.

“Even if I don’t achieve what I set out to, being able to tell myself [that] I set out to do something and get out of my comfort zone - that’s a success,” she told the Herald.

There is also a much less philosophical reason for the move: customers. Kaur said the largest share of Friends That Invest’s podcast listeners and masterclass buyers are women in the United States, including New York.

Being there puts her closer to potential advertising partnerships, live events and customers in one of the world’s biggest financial centres.

“If you live in New York, you’re probably earning a higher salary, you probably have a bit more disposable income,” she said.

“It’s also one of the financial capitals of the world, so people that live there may be more ready to start investing.”

New Zealand, then, proved big enough for Kaur to build an international business. She now wants to find out whether she can make it considerably bigger by leaving.

Kaur is not shifting Friends That Invest’s base out of New Zealand. Her US visa is temporary and she says she intends to return in three years.

She describes herself as a believer in “Team New Zealand” and says it remains a safe and caring place, particularly for raising a family.

Kaur has also watched many of her peers leave. She told the Herald she had “lost a lot of friends” to London, Melbourne and Sydney.

“It is really sad because you want your country to be a place where people want to stay and want to build their businesses,” she said.

“And I feel like I’m on the opposite end where I’ve built my business, created a lot of success, and now I’m building it further.”

Kaur told the Herald it would be “so much better” if New Zealand created an environment where young people thought: “Oh, the best opportunities are actually in the country and not outside.”