CAPITAL GATEWAY

IN THE MAKING FOR OVER A DECADE, INDIA'S ONLY INTERNATIONAL FINANCIAL CENTRE, GIFT CITY NOW SEEMS TO BE TAKING SHAPE WITH FOCUSED POLICIES AND REGULATORY CLARITY. THERE'S GROWING INTEREST FROM INVESTORS AND MORE CONFIDENCE ON THE GROUND BUT A FEW MORE POLICY TWEAKS MAY BE NEEDED

-  SURABHI

“WE ENJOY WORKING here and it’s largely no different from working in Delhi or Mumbai. But we wish the social life were a little better. There’s not much to do after work,” say Niharika and Seema (names changed on request) who are walking down for lunch at their office cafeteria when this writer bumps into them. The 20-somethings have been working with a foreign bank at GIFT City in Gujarat, for the past one and a half years. “There are a lot of young people like us working here who live in Ahmedabad or Gandhinagar,” they say, and before rushing off for lunch, point towards the hectic construction activity taking place all around.

If there’s one phrase that can describe GIFT City— spread across 1,000 acres of land and just a 20-minute drive from Ahmedabad’s Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel International Airport—right now, it is furious activity. Work is on at a frenzied pace—residential apartments, a school and even a hospital are being built around offices in steel and glass towers that are humming with people, amid vast expanses of vacant land. Announced in June 2007, Gujarat International Finance Tec-City or GIFT City, one of India’s long-standing ambitions to house an international financial services centre (IFSC) on the lines of the ones in Singapore and Dubai, is ready for take-off.

Considered a pet project of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, it has got a boost from the central government in recent years. Several companies in the financial services space have set up shop in GIFT City, which currently has an estimated 400 offices, where 26,000 people work.