Corporate treasury centres queue up to establish base at GIFT-IFSC

Investments by operational units double in a quarter to nearly $500 million as of June

GIFT-International Financial Services Centre (IFSC) is seeing a sharp pickup in corporate treasury activity, with 12 units approved or operational, nearly a dozen applications under review and around 20 companies in discussions to establish operations.

 

Investments by treasury centres nearly doubled in three months to around $496 million as of June, from $235 million in March, pointing to growing interest in the financial hub for cross-border funding, investments and risk management. Data for the July-September period is expected by the end of October.

 

Zydus Lifesciences, Sun Pharma, Indus Towers and Bharti Airtel are among the recent companies to have set up treasury centres. The expanding pipeline includes applications from global technology and semiconductor leaders, an international payments major, a Japanese trading conglomerate and a global tyre manufacturer, as well as Indian groups across energy, cement and engineering, sources said.

 

The treasury centres, classified as Global or Regional Corporate Treasury Centres (GRCTCs), also reported loans and advances of $6.54 billion as of June, up from $5.61 billion at the end of March. Dipesh Shah, executive director at the International Financial Services Centres Authority (IFSCA), said the segment could become an important growth engine for GIFT-IFSC. 

 

“The ability to centralise cross-border liquidity, foreign-currency funding, forex management and investments in an internationally oriented financial centre within India is increasingly attractive to both Indian and multinational corporates. We see this evolving from a niche offering into a significant component of GIFT-IFSC’s global financial-services proposition,” he said.

 

The growth follows the IFSCA’s revision of treasury-centre norms in April 2025. The framework allows treasury centres to undertake activities including group-wide borrowing, investments, liquidity management, foreign exchange transactions and both over-the-counter and exchange-traded derivatives.

 

“With progressive regulation, tax competitiveness, a growing financial ecosystem and access to talent, GIFT City (Gujarat International Finance Tec-City) can develop into a major regional and global treasury hub. This will bring international financial activity, capital, high-value employment and expertise to India, deepen our financial markets, strengthen economic resilience and enhance India’s influence in the evolving architecture of global finance,” said Sanjay Kaul, managing director and group chief executive officer of GIFT City.

 

Among the 13 entities already operational in the financial hub are JLL Finance Services, ArcelorMittal Treasury Centre India, ATSOL Global IFSC (subsidiary of Adani Energy Solutions), GAIL Global IFSC, ReNew Treasury and IOC Global Capital Management.

 

Jaiman Patel, partner at EY India-GIFT City, said: “With a 20-year tax holiday, nil withholding tax on eligible interest payments, and a business-friendly regulatory environment, it provides an attractive platform for investment, fund-raising, capital management, and regional growth.”

 

The ability to consolidate these activities could allow companies to manage funding and surplus liquidity across Indian and overseas group entities through a single treasury platform. Smrithi Nair, partner at Juris Corp, said the increase in treasury centres indicated that corporates were no longer viewing the financial hub merely as a “tax-efficient” location.

 

The updated framework, experts said, permits centres to undertake group-wide borrowing, including inter-company deposits and credit arrangements, as well as investments, liquidity management, foreign exchange transactions and exchange-traded derivatives.

 

“This enables funding requirements and surplus liquidity across Indian and overseas group entities to be aggregated and managed through a single treasury platform, potentially reducing fragmented external borrowing, duplicative liquidity buffers and entity-level hedging arrangements,” Nair said.

 

Commodity-related activities could provide another avenue for growth. Siddartha Karnani, partner at King Stubb & Kasiva, said formal recognition of commodity trading as a financial service could significantly expand the functions treasury centres can undertake. “If commodity trading gets formally classified as a financial service under the IFSCA Act, it won’t just open a new product line, it will change what a treasury centre in GIFT City can actually do for a multinational group,” Karnani said.

 

He said hedging, trade financing and re-invoicing for commodities such as crude, metals and agricultural products were still routed through centres such as Singapore, Dubai and Switzerland in many cases because of the absence of regulatory recognition onshore.