V Balasubramanian, MD & CEO of NSE International Exchange (NSE IFSC Ltd), said GIFT City was still at a “nascent stage” of development. “In the past three years, we have made a number of significant headways. But still, we are at a nascent stage… we need to get into the top 10 in the next five years,” he said. “In the last 20 years, Hong Kong managed to get mainland Chinese companies to get listed on the Hong Kong exchange; effectively, importing a lot of capital to boost China’s growth. A similar phenomenon is possible at GIFT IFSC,” Balasubramanian added.\ IFSCA Executive Director (Business Development) Dipesh Shah said GIFT City will take many more years to reach where Singapore is today. “You may still have reservations about the ecosystem in GIFT City achieving the scale and size of what you see in Singapore. I do not think it is going to happen overnight. GIFT will take its time to come to that critical mass. The good part is, it is now in a zone, where it can really take off very fast,” Shah added. Shah said GIFT IFSC currently has more than 540 units. “We had 129 firms on October 1, 2020 when we took over as a unified regulator. We have more than 540 units now in less than three years,” he added. These IFSC units provide employment to more than 5,000 persons.

The total banking assets size in GIFT IFSC is about USD 41.2 billion where banks have conducted cumulative transactions worth USD 508 billion as of July. Similarly, the monthly turnover on IFSC international stock exchanges last month stood at USD 60 billion.