An Alternate Investment Fund (AIF) from an Indian financial services company has become the 200th fund to be granted approval in GIFT City in Gujarat that now houses 13 AIFs that have relocated to India from foreign jurisdictions like Singapore, Mauritius and Dubai.

“Motilal Oswal’s Fund of Fund has become the 200th fund to be registered in GIFT IFSC. We granted approval for the fund on Monday (December 23),” K Rajaraman, chairperson, International Financial Centres Authority (IFSCA) told businessline. “It is a private equity fund and will be investing into other funds in India,” he added.

Till date, IFSCA has registered 141 Fund Management Entities which have launched a record 200 schemes with a cumulative targeted corpus of $45 billion from IFSC.

“Till now, 13 funds with commitments of over $2.87 billion have relocated from various jurisdictions including Singapore, Mauritius and Dubai,” Rajaraman said. This includes seven funds from Singapore that have commitments of almost $2.3 billion. Apart from the funds from Singapore, there are five funds from Mauritius with $554 million commitments and one fund from Dubai with commitments of $20 million that have redomiciled to India.

As of December 2024, commitments of $12 billion have been raised by the funds in IFSC and $4.61 billion actually invested into India and other countries, IFSCA stated. Over 2004 investors from 58 jurisdictions have invested into the AIFs. Also over 100 investors have joined Portfolio Management Schemes (PMS) operated by Fund Management Entities in IFSC, the authority added.

The IFSCA chairperson also said that the authority was also trying to lower the cost of financing in GIFT City. “We recently amended our fund regulations… The cost of financing has several layers. One is the cost of capital, cost of regulations, country risk and customer risk. Our idea is to make the regulatory risk very thin — especially of uncertaining in regulations and those that add to cost of operations,making the market inefficient. Our idea is to ensure more competition, simpler regulations,” Rajaraman added.

This initiative is part of the unified regulator’s broader efforts to encourage financial institutions in GIFT City to offer capital and other financial services to Indian companies at globally competitive rates, the official explained.