K Rajaraman greets Euromoney with a wide smile, starts talking – and doesn’t stop. An hour-long conversation with him, words flowing like a torrent, is like five hours with someone else.
There’s a lot to discuss. Cheery and engaging, with an open demeanour, Rajaraman is chair of the International Financial Services Centres Authority (IFSCA), a four-year-old regulator that oversees Gujarat International Finance Tec-City, better known as Gift City, a cross-border financial services zone taking shape near Ahmedabad in northwest India.
A high-flying civil servant who previously headed India’s telecommunications ministry, Rajaraman was tasked a year ago with transforming Gift City into a true international financial hub to replicate and rival those in Singapore and Dubai.
“What we want to do is be a platform for foreign investors to land in India in a very soft manner,” he says. “That is the whole idea. We give foreign investors the option of directly setting up business here in India.”
“Soft manner” is a careful way of describing the many challenges global banks, insurers and funds face in putting capital to work in a country with an only partially open capital account.
