Gujarat International Finance Tec-City | Waiting to be Mumbai 

GIFT City, located along the Sabarmati river in Gujarat, aims to become a hyper-modern and hyper-connected financial hub.

Down the banks of the Sabarmati river, about 10 km from Mahatma Gandhi’s austere ashram where time has stood still, is a city of high-rise, glass-fronted smart buildings. They aspire to house multinational conglomerates accustomed to a built-up infrastructure and an IT-managed world. Spread across 1,000 acres, Gujarat International Finance Tec-City, or GIFT City, is the current Prime Minister, then Chief Minister of the State, Narendra Modi’s 2008 dream.

Last September, the Global Financial Centres Index ranked GIFT City at 62nd position, higher than Mumbai, at 66, but far from Singapore, in third position behind New York and London. Amid a slew of incentives to set up shop here, a hustle culture with the Prime Minister descending on GIFT City a few times a year, and business leaders like Mukesh Ambani calling it “a gateway of modern India’s growth”, the city is projecting itself as hyper-everything: hyper-modern, hyper-connected, hyper-developing.

The development plan was approved in 2011, but a revised plan is under way. “GIFT City has been envisioned as a high-rise high-density Central Business District (CBD) targeting approximately 5 lakh employment developing 62 mn. sq.ft of built-up area which comprises of (sic) commercial, residential and social facilities,” the planning proposal report 2023 says.

GIFT City is flanked by Ahmedabad — founded in the 15th century and the centre of post-colonial learning institutes like the Indian Institute of Management and the National Institute of Design — and Gandhinagar, built on its periphery in 1965 for government offices.

The new city, about 20 minutes from the international airport and built along National Highway 48, resembles a family upstart with money, power, and the backing of a patriarch.

“Within the next decade, it will be in the league of the UAE and Singapore for a range of business-related and financial services,” says Shaan Zaveri, 50, who runs Collated Ventures, a boutique property development agency, in Ahmedabad. He talks about the areas he feels GIFT City will see the most commerce in: insurance, fintech, offshore accounting. “But the list is becoming longer as it progresses,” says Zaveri, who also owns Swati Snacks, known for its panki (a dal-based pancake) sold from two Ahmedabad outlets. The Prime Minister, in a speech at the 20th Vibrant Gujarat Global Summit 2024, said aircraft and shipbuilding were also part of the plan.

Zaveri is from the Sarabhai family that used to own textile businesses in the city. “Maybe there is a little hype around it now, but it will soon live up to that image,” says the soft-spoken Zaveri, over the vegetarian food that his mother popularised in Swati’s first outlet in Mumbai.