GIFT City's Pitch to Indian Family Offices: Tax Breaks at Home, Access Abroad

A 20-year tax holiday. Fifteen foreign currencies. Access to global markets without fully leaving India. That's the offer Gujarat International Finance Tec-City is putting in front of Indian family offices — even as Singapore and Dubai continue to pull ahead with the scale to show for it.

GIFT IFSC was set up with the explicit goal of "creating a global financial hub in India," regulated by the International Financial Services Centres Authority. On paper, the incentives are hard to ignore. An eligible IFSC unit can claim "100% deduction of qualifying income for 20 consecutive years out of 25 years" — a structure the report notes is "particularly relevant to an IFSC FME/family-office investment-management business."

The regulatory carve-outs matter just as much as the tax break. IFSC units are treated as non-residents for foreign exchange purposes, so their dealings with overseas entities fall outside India's Foreign Exchange Management Act unless specifically brought under it. Units can transact in 15 foreign currencies, and resident individuals can remit up to $250,000 a year through the Liberalised Remittance Scheme to invest through them.

Where does Gift City stand in comparison to Dubai, Singapore
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Put together, the report frames GIFT City's core appeal as "onshore presence with offshore functionality" — global market access and currency flexibility, without the family fully relocating capital or decision-making outside India. That's a meaningfully different proposition from Singapore or Dubai, where the whole point is often distance from home-jurisdiction friction.

Where Singapore, Dubai Stand

Singapore's case rests on scale and maturity. Family office numbers there "crossed 2,000 by the end of 2024," a 43% jump from 1,400 the year before, backed by tax treaties with more than 85 countries and one of the deepest wealth-management talent pools in Asia.

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Dubai's case is regulatory looseness and zero-tax structuring. Its three free zones — DIFC, Dubai World Trade Centre and Dubai Multi Commodities Centre — offer benefits across "income tax, capital gains tax, inheritance tax and wealth tax," each under its own rulebook, with DIFC alone housing over 800 family-office-related structures.

What the playbook doesn't offer is a scoreboard entry for GIFT City itself. There's no family office count, no AUM figure set against Singapore's or Dubai's — only the architecture. As the report's own closing line on global hubs puts it: "The best location depends on the priorities of the family office, whether regulatory certainty, access to markets, depth of talent, proximity to the home base or other factors."

For GIFT City, the framework is built. Whether India's family offices actually walk through the door is the number this year's playbook couldn't yet supply.

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