Blitz India Business
NEW DELHI: Assets at India’s International Financial Services Centre have crossed $111 billion. Set that beside the $19.8 billion that arrived from Singapore last year, and the purpose of the whole project becomes legible.
Assets held at GIFT International Financial Services Centre have passed $111 billion across international banking, capital markets, asset management and financial services. The International Financial Services Centres Authority acts as a single regulator for banking, capital markets, insurance and funds inside the centre — a design choice that removes the multi-regulator negotiation an international institution would otherwise face when setting up in India. Registrations continue under the IFSCA Capital Market Intermediaries Regulations, 2025, including an investment-banking registration granted to the IFSC arm of a US fund manager on 31 July 2026.
The strategic case is best made through the FDI numbers released in June. Singapore supplied $19.8 billion of India’s $58.85 billion of foreign direct investment in 2025-26 — 33.6 per cent from one jurisdiction — and $194.68 billion cumulatively since April 2000, 24.72 per cent of the all-time total. Mauritius is second at $186.8 billion. Between them two small jurisdictions account for roughly half of all foreign equity ever invested in India.
The onshore answer: GIFT City, Gandhinagar. Assets at India’s International Financial Services Centre have crossed $111 billion, regulated by IFSCA as a single authority for banking, capital markets, insurance and funds.
Two small jurisdictions account for roughly half of all foreign equity ever invested in India. GIFT City is the attempt to bring the fees, the law and the supervision onshore with the money.
At a Glance
• GIFT IFSC assets: above $111 billion
• Regulator: IFSCA — single authority for banking, capital markets, insurance, funds
• Recent registration: investment banker, 31 July 2026, under the 2025 Capital Market Intermediaries Regulations
• Singapore FDI into India, FY26: $19.8 bn — 33.6 per cent of the total
• India total FDI, FY26: $58.85 bn, up 18 per cent
• Singapore cumulative since 2000: $194.68 bn — 24.72 per cent
• Mauritius cumulative: $186.8 bn
• GIFT activity lines: banking, fund management, aircraft and ship leasing, bullion, global in-house centres
Very little of that money originates in either place. Singapore and Mauritius are intermediation jurisdictions: capital raised in Europe, the Gulf, Japan and North America is pooled and structured there before entering India, for reasons of tax treaty, contract law, arbitration and the availability of specialist service providers. The routing is not evasion; it is infrastructure. But the fees, the legal work, the fund administration and the tax residence all sit outside India, and so does the regulatory relationship with the investor.
GIFT City is the attempt to hold that layer onshore. An offshore fund that redomiciles into the IFSC keeps the dollar denomination and the international regulatory framework it needs, while the servicing, employment and supervision move to Gujarat. Aircraft leasing, ship leasing, global in-house centres, bullion trading and offshore fund management have all been built there for the same reason. Getting assets to $111 billion is the proof of concept; the measure that will matter over the next five years is what proportion of India-bound foreign capital is structured at GIFT rather than routed through Singapore.
The honest constraint is that intermediation jurisdictions compete on depth of ecosystem rather than on rules alone. Singapore’s advantage is fifty years of accumulated legal precedent, arbitration capacity and a concentration of specialist firms — things that cannot be legislated into existence. India’s answers are scale of underlying opportunity, a single regulator, and a tax and dispute framework that has been built deliberately rather than inherited.
The constructive marker to watch is not the headline asset figure but the composition beneath it: the number of funds domiciled rather than merely registered, and the share of new India-bound foreign investment structured at GIFT. Those two series, published quarterly, would tell the story the aggregate cannot.