With their striking architecture, the dozen-or-so high rises buildings that make up the Gift City skyline look surreal on a cloudy July afternoon, like spaceships on Mars. I am there as part of a contingent of reporters from all over the country and we are headed to the Radisson Gift City Club, which is one of the two five-star hotels already operating in Gift City. The occasion is a bell ringing ceremony to mark the end of the first trading session of the Gift Nifty.
Stock markets around the world are known to operate with a certain razzmatazz, emphasising the glamour of money, while de-emphasizing the seriousness of it. This ceremony could very well have had a few film stars, but the organisers decided to avoid distractions and maintain gravitas. After all, the International Financial Services Centre (IFSC) at Gift City is the brainchild of no less a persona than Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who purportedly had a vision of a hi-tech financial hub in Gandhinagar while he was on a visit to Singapore as Chief Minister of Gujarat in 2008.
Woven with garlands, the large bell on the ballroom stage looks rather impressive, and there is some excitement in the count down to its ringing. Gathered there are officials of the organisations that played a role in setting up the NSE International (NSE IX) in Gift City and the mood on stage is congratulatory. First there is the affable managing director of NSE, Ashishkumar Chauhan, who says that besides attracting global capital, NSE IX will also promote financial innovation: “We hope this IFSC will be a hub for cutting edge financial services using technologies like blockchain and AI.”
The Gift Nifty is the new name for the SGX Nifty, a derivative contract created in partnership with the Singapore Exchange more than two decades ago. Earlier, all trades on SGX were done in Singapore but now a portion of the process will be shifted to Gandhinagar. While SGX will continue to be the front end of the process and responsible for clearing and settlement, the order matching required to execute the trade will be done in Gandhinagar.
SGX is handing over a valuable part of the operation to NSE IX and Injeti Srinivas, chairman of the IFSC Society sees the move as an example of “collaboration in the midst of competition.” At the launch of the new Gift Nifty logo last month, Mr Srinivas had expressed caution and he reiterated this at the bell-ringing ceremony, saying, “This marks the end of the gestation period. It is the beginning of a long journey.”
SGX makes it a point to show its support of the Gift Nifty, with managing director and head of services Toni Torchetti physically present to ring the bell and CEO Boon-Chye Loh to be seen overhead on a video screen. When a reporter asks him what SGX had to gain from the new arrangement, Mr Loh is diplomatic. “Gift Nifty is the start of a much broader partnership. We have a shared vision of an interconnected market for all of Asia,” he says.
Former Finance Secretary and NSE IFSC chairman Rajiv Mehrishi strikes a thoughtful note amid the general bonhomie, saying it was left to SGX to develop the SGX Nifty as a product because India did not have the wherewithal to do so then. “I now hope our infrastructure and regulatory framework will allow us to develop products in-house,” he says.
And then there’s Tapan Ray, managing director of Gift City, who says the shift in operations is a game changer for Gift City, which is in the process of building world-class social infrastructure for its denizens. It already has an International School and a hospital is now in the works. Mr Ray said that with the help of the government of Gujarat, Gift City is creating infrastructure for “evening life,” a rather strange term which I had to google. As it turns out, evening life is generally used as a euphemism for old age. The term Mr Ray was looking for is “night life,” but it might have seemed inappropriate, even at a bell-ringing ceremony.
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