GIFT City just climbed nine places globally — what it means for land nearby

Times of India reported on 18 September 2026 that GIFT City climbed nine places to rank 37th globally in the 40th edition of the Global Financial Centres Index (GFCI 40) — up from 46th in the previous edition. It now also sits among the top 15 financial centres in the Asia-Pacific region.

What the GFCI actually measures

The Global Financial Centres Index isn't a popularity contest. It's compiled twice a year by independent researchers, and the GFCI 40 edition evaluated 115 financial centres worldwide using 144 instrumental factors plus 39,531 survey assessments collected from 6,147 international respondents — scoring each centre on its regulatory environment, skilled talent, access to finance, ICT infrastructure, and innovation support.

That's a meaningfully different kind of evidence than a developer's brochure. It's an independent, methodical read on whether a place is becoming more credible as somewhere international capital actually wants to be.

The fintech number is the more interesting one

Alongside the headline ranking, GIFT City moved up three places to 26th globally in the GFCI's specific fintech ranking, from 29th previously. The same report also named GIFT City as one of 15 centres worldwide expected to become more significant over the next two to three years — and flagged digital infrastructure, fintech, digital asset businesses, anti-money-laundering frameworks and deeper capital markets as the priorities financial centres will be judged on over the next five years.

In other words: this isn't a one-time jump that could just as easily reverse. It's a centre being tracked as part of a longer trajectory — which is exactly the kind of signal we look for before we get interested in the land around something.

Why this matters to the land story, not just the skyline

We've written before about what happened to farmland near GIFT City as the financial hub took shape around it — one widely reported case went from roughly ₹7 crore to ₹210 crore as the project moved from plan to reality. That re-rating didn't happen because of a single announcement. It happened because, year after year, GIFT City kept becoming more real: more tenants, more infrastructure, and now, more international credibility by an independent measure.

A nine-place jump in a single edition of a 115-centre global index is a continuation of that pattern, not a one-off headline. It's one more documented data point for the same corridor thesis we've been building Investor's Paradise around — Ahmedabad's growth belt earning outside recognition, not just local optimism.