Artha Bharat Launches First Physical Gold Fund from GIFT City IFSC

The Launch

On July 3, 2026, Artha Bharat Investment Managers IFSC LLP, a leading fund management entity in GIFT City, debuted the Artha Bharat FinMet Physical Gold Fund—the first-ever physical commodity fund and the first gold fund launched from GIFT City.

The open-ended, passively managed fund is launched in partnership with Singapore-based precious metals specialist FinMet, who serves as the investment adviser. The scheme is designed to track international spot gold prices with minimal tracking error, allocating at least 95% of its assets to London Bullion Association (LBMA) standard gold bars traded on the India International Bullion Exchange (IIBX).

Regulatory Foundation

The launch follows IFSCA's formal notification of commodity trading as a financial product under the IFSCA Act, effective January 2026. As of January 2, 2026, the International Financial Services Centres Authority (IFSCA) implemented a series of regulatory overhauls, most notably the formal notification of commodity trading as a "financial product." This reclassification is designed to consolidate the regulatory oversight of physical and derivative commodity markets under a single, unified framework.

Fund Operations and Investor Access

The fund offers weekly subscriptions and redemptions, providing investors with liquidity rarely available in physical commodity-based fund structures. The Artha Bharat FinMet Physical Gold Fund has a highly competitive total expense ratio (TER) of 0.65% per annum. Physical gold will be stored in IIDI (India International Depository IFSC) insured vaults within GIFT City—regulated by IFSCA.

Investors will have an option to receive certified physical gold bars or equivalent cash when they wish to redeem their units in the scheme.

Infrastructure Background: IIBX and IIDI

IIBX is a JV of NSE, NSDL, CDSL, MCX and a BSE subsidiary. The India International Bullion Exchange (IIBX), launched in July 2022 at GIFT City as India's first international bullion exchange, has struggled to establish sustained trading volumes. After rising from 411 kg in FY2022–23 to 92 tonnes in FY2024–25, volumes collapsed to barely 600 kg year-to-date in FY2025–26.

Significance: Institutional Asset Class in IIBX

Critically, the activity that has driven IIBX to date has been almost entirely commercial import-led, by jewelers with no meaningful participation by institutional investment funds holding gold as a financial asset. The Artha Bharat FinMet Physical Gold Fund will be the first investment fund to hold physical gold on IIBX, introducing a new category of participant and a qualitatively different source of demand: long-term institutional investment flows rather than short-cycle import transactions.

Artha Bharat hopes this catalyses other fund managers, family offices, and institutional investors to follow, and in doing so, fulfil the original vision of GIFT City as a global hub for gold finance, not merely a conduit for jewelry imports.