The Brigade International Financial Centre: Changing India’s Ecosystem

What is the most important factor in driving the economic growth of the country?

Infrastructure development? Foreign investment? Ease of doing business? Human and natural resources? Technological advancement?

All of these answers are correct. But drawing in foreign investments and easing out the process of doing business in India is among the tricky factors which need to be resolved. The financial services sector needed a push to help them improve. GIFT City is the Indian government’s answer to that.

GIFT city or Gujarat International Financial Tec-city is India’s single Financial Tech City that deals with the international market. It is a global benchmark for the International Financial Services Centre (IFSC). It was set up to encourage foreign investments and ease of doing business.

Brigade has set up BIFC (Brigade International Financial Centre), an exemplary office development at GIFT City that is Brigade’s first-ever project in an International Financial Services Centre. The group has been allotted 1.1 million sq. ft. of space, including two towers for official space. The first phase of development including 315,000 sq. ft. has been launched in 2018. The 14-storeyed office tower is all set to be the most sought-after office space in the city.

The land space is in the SEZ (Special Economic Zone) to support financial projects. The project will offer the perfect platform to meet the rising surge in the international market requirement. BIFC would offer an unparalleled office ecosystem in the Global Financial & IT services sector.

How will BIFC change the ecosystem of India?
The objective of the Brigade International Financial Centre is to create an international and national financial service sector. Hence, a large part of the project is under SEZ development which provides world-class facilities. It offers the right kind of business environment for enterprises such as domestic and multinational banks, insurance firms, foreign exchange companies, financial technology firms, and financial support services.

BIFC is a strategic and financially dominating project, perfectly conceptualized to boost the financial sector. This direction helped BIFC to achieve the target of creating a world-class office space for international trade. This would not be possible without a technology upgrade. Therefore, we continuously try to improve our technologies and deliverables to keep clients and engineering sectors satisfied.

The BIFC aims to create a business environment at par with the international level. The project overlooks at all the aspects - be it excellent services and facilities, eco-friendly offices, a healthy working environment, or a tech-savvy space. It is a futuristic project which will set the stage for many corporates to establish themselves and set the benchmark for future developments.

Some of the key highlights of BIFC:

1. A national and international hub of IT and ITeS companies, finance companies, commodity exchange, global trading, insurance, offshore banking, and data centers among others
2. Strict environmental norms, with built-in technologies for a sustainable ecosystem
3. Providing financial incentives, regulatory freedom, and world-class infrastructure
4. Grade A specifications
5. LEED Gold pre-certified
6. IFSC / SEZ benefits
7. 24*7 power back up with an outage of 5.3 minutes/annum

Employment Scope
Establishing such a large scale international office space in the GIFT city will definitely impact the employment sector. This will change the socio-economic ecosystem of the country. The jobs created will be different and varied from today’s scenario, ranging from mid-level to high-level jobs.

In terms of real estate investments, the returns and growth will be higher and beneficial and would make them part of the development of the country’s first IFSC.

India's financial sector has been booming, yet, there was a sheer absence of world-class facilities development. The BIFC will provide one of the few buildings that will offer the finest quality in a workplace environment. The services and facilities provided, along with the striking features and the voluminous employment creation will change the dynamics of the current working culture. And this is just one of the nascent steps undertaken towards changing the face of the Indian ecosystem.