GIFTCL Invites Global Bids for 754,000 sq ft Commercial Tower in GIFT City SEZ

What was decided

Gujarat International Finance Tec-City Company Limited (GIFTCL), the special purpose vehicle of the Gujarat Government driving the development of GIFT City, issued a global invitation for bids to develop a state-of-the-art commercial tower spanning an impressive 754,000 sq. ft. within the Special Economic Zone's processing area. The bids can be submitted by domestic or international companies, consortia, or joint ventures, and the selected bidder, as a co-developer, will be required to design, finance, develop, construct, operate, and maintain the commercial tower.

This is a tender/bid invitation, not a completed allotment or a signed lease. As of the bid documents reviewed, no winning bidder or signed co-development agreement had been publicly confirmed.

Land tenure and construction obligations

The land for the project will be provided on a leasehold basis for 99 years, and the lease deed will only be executed once construction is completed, which must be done within five years. This structure means GIFTCL retains the land title until the developer has actually built and finished the tower — the lease is a reward for delivery, not an upfront transfer.

Eligibility criteria for bidders

• Financial strength: the bidder must have an average annual turnover of at least Rs 3.22 billion (Rs 322.49 crore) over the last three consecutive financial years preceding the bid due date.
• Net worth: bidders must also demonstrate a net worth of INR 161.24 crore in the financial year prior to submission.
• Technical track record: the bidder must have completed at least one project of commercial, residential, institutional, or mixed-use buildings, or parking structures, with a minimum size of half a million sq ft and a height of 40 meters in the last six years, and should have completed a combined construction area of at least 3.77 million sq ft during this period.

Bid timeline

A pre-bid meeting was scheduled for December 27 (2024), and the deadline for submitting financial bids was set for January 31 (2025), with bids to be opened on the same day. These are the dates specified in the December 2024 tender notice; the site has not found a subsequent public announcement confirming which entity, if any, was ultimately selected.

Permitted end use of the tower

The selected bidder will have the option to lease or sub-lease units, built-up space, or premises in the project to entities engaged in activities such as banking, insurance, brokerage, asset management, commodity markets, capital markets, IT/ITeS, financial services, or other services authorized by the International Financial Services Centres Authority (IFSCA) or the SEZ authority, and these entities will need formal approval from the IFSCA to set up units and operate. In practice, this restricts the tower's tenants to IFSCA/SEZ-approved financial and IT/ITeS businesses rather than general commercial occupiers.

Context: why this matters for GIFT City

GIFT City, located between Ahmedabad and Gandhinagar, is India's first operational international financial services centre and has quickly emerged as a financial hub, housing over 500 entities, including aircraft and ship leasing companies, fintech firms, banks, fund houses, stock exchanges, and India's first bullion exchange. A new 754,000 sq ft tower in the SEZ processing area adds meaningfully to the stock of IFSCA-eligible office space available for such entities, using a co-developer/leasehold model that GIFTCL has used for other towers in the zone.

For scale, the total area for the development of GIFT is 359 hectares (886 acres) out of which the special economic zone (SEZ) constitutes 106 hectares (261 acres), and this tower sits within that SEZ's processing area, which is the zone's core commercial and financial-services district.