GIFT City: Is the lifestyle worth the home price?
GIFT City's residential prices have doubled from about ₹4,500 to over ₹9,500 per sq ft, since 2020, surging far more than Ahmedabad or Gandhinagar
My fascination with GIFT City mirrors that of policymakers, bankers, and the media—everyone’s watching India’s only global financial hub. Conceived in 2007 by then Gujarat CM Narendra Modi as India’s answer to Singapore and Dubai, it has been nearly two decades in the making. I last visited Gift City for the very first time, a decade ago.
This time around, I was keen to see if the “planned city of the future” had finally lived up to its vision.
A few aspects really stood out. Twenty-five towers are buzzing with offices, another thirty-five are rising. The momentum is not just in steel and glass. Close to a thousand entities are registered in GIFT IFSC, banking assets have touched ninety-four billion dollars and are inching towards the hundred-billion mark. Global names such HSBC, J.P. Morgan are scaling. Google is establishing a global fintech operations centre. One of the towers is already nicknamed the “US Block,” home to Bank of America, Microsoft, Capgemini and others. Adding to the ecosystem, Deakin University and the University of Wollongong are building India’s first foreign campuses here, while Leelavati Hospital and Jamanabai Narsee School are in the making.
And yet, when the sun sets on this ~900-acre smart city, the contrast is striking. The city falls silent— some construction cranes continue to hum, a few lights flicker on, but it’s nowhere close to a lived-in city yet. In contrast, the two cities right next door, Ahmedabad and Gandhinagar, buzz late into night.
That leads me to the question: are residential prices here keeping pace with the lifestyle? The numbers tell a striking story.
In 2020, average prices in Ahmedabad were around ₹5,500 per square foot; today they hover closer to ₹8,000. Gandhinagar has climbed from about ₹3,000 to ₹4,500.
GIFT on the other hand has surged the fastest — more than doubling from about ₹4,500 to over ₹9,500 per sq. ft.
This is a substantial jump for a city that barely has any residents. The first half of 2025 saw the highest number of new launches in GIFT City, taking total supply to 3,168 units. But sales lagged — only 820 units were picked up. At the end of July 2025, nearly 2,100 units remained unsold, as per data by Propequity. This points to a heavy inventory overhang in under-construction apartments.
If sales are sluggish, why have prices in GIFT shot up so much? Largely because developers have been bidding aggressively on the promise of future demand. Unlike other markets, land here isn’t sold outright — instead, developers bid for development rights at a government-set base price. Normally, bid prices for GIFT City residential development rise by just 5–10% every two years. But, right before the 2024 general elections, GIFT City floated a tender, and the bids that came in were so aggressive that the residential bid price almost doubled to ₹6,550 per sq. ft. And so, the steep rise in costs for homebuyers.
My next question — who’s paying these steep prices? For now, mostly investors. Builders claim end-users have come in too, and one of the early projects by Sangath Developers already has about 80 families living there, as I witnessed first-hand. But with the bulk of supply still under construction, it’s clear many investors will have to loosen their purse strings much before GIFT turns into a truly lived-in city.
There’s another conundrum: GIFT was initially positioned as a walk-to-work city. But trading desks in IFSC buildings don’t employ thousands of people; many function with lean teams of five to ten. The larger workforce will come from Global Capability Centres — the GCCs that are setting up in the domestic zone. While these firms bring scale, the salaries they pay are not at the top end. Currently, there are ~28000 people working at GIFT city, but most of them are priced out of GIFT’s soaring apartments, and end up living in Ahmedabad or Gandhinagar instead. Even those who can afford GIFT City often choose not to live there. The missing social life is a deal-breaker.
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As GIFT City CEO Sanjay Kaul told me, “I’m the Chief Sales Officer.” He knows his task is to woo global corporates eyeing their next India hub, and he is also aware, offices alone won’t make the city thrive. To rival Bengaluru, BKC in Mumbai, Gurugram or Hyderabad, GIFT needs energy after dark — buzzing food courts, waterfront promenades, amphitheatres, European-style cafés, global cuisines, even a Cyberhub-like district. In short, the lifestyle infrastructure young professionals now consider basic to urban living.
Some of this is already taking shape — a sports arena, expansive food court, an open-air amphitheatre, and a central park are in making. The Sabarmati Riverfront extension could further anchor GIFT with a cultural heart.
India's most sustainable city
That said, GIFT does have one big positive: being India’s most sustainable city. For global corporations hyper-aware of their environmental footprint, GIFT is a real gift—it checks every sustainability box on those leasing forms. This was part of Modi’s original vision: a city that sets benchmarks for planning, compliance, and environmental standards. Think of an underground tunnel carrying waste, water, gas, power, and ICT lines. Every commercial, residential developer and tenant follows strict norms on segregation, recycling, and reuse. A district cooling system cuts energy use, water is metered and recycled, and even the landscaping is sustained with treated water. GIFT is India’s true greenfield city built to enforce sustainability across its entire footprint.
As MD of Shivalik Group Taral Shah puts it, “It’s the Dubai amongst the two Sharjah(s) — Gandhinagar and Ahmedabad. You can’t compare conventionally developed city blocks with a well-laid-out township. GIFT scores on that front.”
Connectivity is the other big ace. The recently operational Ahmedabad Metro Phase II now extends directly into GIFT City, linking it with Motera, Gandhinagar, with proposals for an internal metro loop to ease last-mile movement within the campus. The most exciting though is the upcoming Mumbai–Ahmedabad bullet train that will place GIFT within a high-speed corridor to India’s financial capital in 2.5 hours. GIFT is 20 minutes from Ahmedabad Airport, and Dholera International Airport will further boost its connectivity.
My takeaway after this visit: lifestyle may be substantially lagging home prices for now, but if the social fabric catches up, early buyers could well be the smartest investors. By 2030, when all 60 planned towers rise and nearly a lakh employees walk their corridors, that bet might just pay off big. Patience for new buyers, is recommended.
Manisha Natarajan is a well-known editorial voice in Real Estate and Sustainable Built Environment.
