Every IFSCA registration is published on the authority's register, and the register is the most honest picture of GIFT City available — no projections, no press releases, just who actually got licensed. We maintain a live, searchable copy of it in our Entity Intelligence directory, and this article looks at what the current register says.
As of this analysis, the register holds over 2,350 active registrations across nineteen categories. The distribution is anything but even.
Fund management is the centre of gravity
With around 785 registrations, fund management is the single largest category on the register — roughly a third of everything IFSCA has ever registered. Within it, the mix has shifted over time: early registrations were dominated by the alternative investment fund route, while the unified Fund Management Entity framework has brought a wave of registered FMEs launching restricted schemes.
The lesson for a new entrant is twofold. The ecosystem — administrators, custodians, legal counsel, tax advisors — is deepest here, which lowers the practical friction of setting up. And the category's dominance means IFSCA's fund-management team has seen almost every structure before, which makes query resolution more predictable than in newer categories.
Bullion is the quiet giant
The second and third largest categories both belong to the bullion ecosystem: around 436 metals and commodities entities and 355 qualified jewellers. Together they rival fund management in sheer count, driven by the India International Bullion Exchange and the qualified-jeweller route that lets importers participate without setting up an IFSC unit at all.
This is the register's most under-reported story. Public discussion of GIFT City focuses on funds and banks, but the physical-economy build-out — vaults, trading members, jewellers importing through the exchange — has been just as significant by registration count.
Capital markets and finance companies fill the middle
Capital market intermediaries account for around 293 registrations, spread across broker dealers, investment advisers, distributors and research entities — a sign that the sell-side and advisory infrastructure around the funds industry is maturing. Finance companies, at around 114, include the aircraft and ship leasing units that have made GIFT City a genuine player in global aviation finance.
Banking, at around 45 IFSC Banking Units, is small by count but not by weight: each IBU is a branch of a significant Indian or foreign bank, and together they intermediate the foreign-currency flows the rest of the ecosystem runs on.
The long tail is where the optionality lives
BATF service providers, payment services, global in-house centres, foreign universities and fintech sandbox entities each hold a handful to a few dozen registrations. These categories are young, and their frameworks are still being refined — which is precisely when early entrants shape practice and face the least competition for the regulator's attention.
For anyone evaluating GIFT City, the register answers a question no brochure can: is anyone like me already there? Our Entity Intelligence directory lets you filter the live register by category and sub-category and see exactly who holds each registration.
Method note
Figures are drawn from the live IFSCA register as mirrored in our directory at the time of writing, excluding surrendered and cancelled registrations. Counts change as new registrations are granted; the directory always reflects the current register.
