Gujarat International Finance Tec-City (GIFT City), a dream project of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, is all set to enhance its urban experience with mega projects like a 21-acre Central Park, a riverfront development, and a Lilavati Hospital, aimed at boosting recreational, environmental, and healthcare amenities.
Located in Gujarat’s Gandhinagar, GIFT City is India’s first operational smart city, which has high-end civic infrastructure, including India’s first-of-its-kind utility tunnel and Command and Control Centre (C4).
GIFT City, which is spread across 1,000 acres of land, hosts India’s first and only International Financial Services Centre (IFSC). It’s a hub for financial and IT companies from around the world, offering an ideal ecosystem for both local and international businesses.
Conceived during PM Modi’s tenure as CM of Gujarat, GIFT City has evolved into India’s flagship international financial hub, drawing global businesses, futuristic infrastructure, and a reimagining of urban financial ecosystems. Modi’s vision was to create in India what Singapore, Dubai, and Hong Kong represent to the world: an international financial and technology hub engineered with next-generation urban infrastructure. Modi’s vision extended far beyond finance. He imagined GIFT as India’s first integrated greenfield smart city, where world-class urban design, technology, sustainability, and quality of life converge.
According to Mr Sanjay Kaul, Managing Director and Group CEO, GIFT City, “As the country’s only International Financial Services Centre (IFSC) and first operational smart city, GIFT City today hosts over a thousand financial and technology entities, including leading global banks, insurers, capital market players, fintechs, and Global Capability Centres (GCCs). The ecosystem is expanding rapidly, supported by world-class infrastructure such as district cooling, automated waste collection, integrated utility tunnels, and seamless multi-modal connectivity, including metro access.”
Speaking about the business highlights of the GIFT City, IFSCA chairperson K Rajaraman said, “There are over 1,034 registered companies here. The 38 banks present here have total assets of USD 100.14 billion.”
He further said the IFSC provides the facility for international investors and NRIs to trade from anywhere in the world.
GIFT City boasts India’s first utility tunnel. By housing all utilities within this tunnel, the need for road excavation for future repairs, maintenance, or upgrades is eliminated. This makes the GIFT a “digging-free city”.
Another key feature of GIFT City’s high-end civic infrastructure includes the Command and Control Centre (C4), India’s first fully automated waste management system, and the district cooling system.
GIFT City-Utility Tunnel:
GIFT City features India’s first-of-its-kind utility tunnel, a breakthrough urban infrastructure model that allows all municipal services to be accessed, managed, and maintained from within a single underground corridor. Because every major utility is housed inside this tunnel, the city never needs to be excavated for repairs, upgrades, or maintenance, making GIFT City a truly “digging-free city.”
The tunnel has been engineered with smooth access pathways, along with drainage systems, internal lighting, ventilation, security monitoring, rodent-control features, access-control mechanisms, dewatering systems, and advanced fire-protection installations, ensuring that municipal teams can operate efficiently and safely at all times.
It accommodates power-distribution cables, chilled-water pipelines to and from the District Cooling Plant, raw and treated water pipelines connected to the Water Treatment Plant, treated-sewage pipelines for reuse applications, automated waste-collection pipelines, and multi-utility water pipes.
GIFT City’s Command & Control Centre (C4):
It ensures secure, tech-enabled urban management through real-time utility monitoring and coordinated emergency response. The C4 transforms GIFT City from a cluster of buildings into a smart, integrated urban ecosystem. It connects power, water, cooling, transport, waste management, and on-ground emergency teams into one digital control room. This lets city managers track incidents as they happen, deploy teams instantly, and maintain service continuity without the public ever noticing a disruption.
GIFT City also boasts India’s first fully automated waste management system, featuring a vacuum chute network designed to streamline collection and processing.
District cooling system:
It was introduced for the first time in India in GIFT City for commercial use. There are no outdoor AC units in the district cooling system, which also enables better aesthetics. District cooling drastically cuts carbon footprints through centralised production, using 30 per cent less energy than traditional AC systems.
Chilled water is supplied to the building level via the utility tunnel, which reduces energy and maintenance costs, minimises noise and vibrations, and improves air quality. The 1 km long and 7 m deep Samrudhi Sarovar is designed for 15 days of drinking water storage.