GIFT City: Wooing foreign universities to India

IN ASIA, not least India, one of the key aspirational goals for many families is Western higher education. Universities in the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, Singapore and other jurisdictions in Europe, have long been favourites. However, the Covid pandemic, and now the war in Ukraine, has impacted as well the plans of students enrolled in or aspiring to foreign universities. We have all read about foreign students who had to be rescued from eastern Ukraine in the early days of the conflict.

Taking a leaf from these global shifts, new Indian regulations were published in October that will allow certain foreign universities and educational institutions to open a branch in Gujarat International Financial Tec-City (Gift City) in Gandhinagar, Gujarat, without being subject to certain domestic mandates. The regulations also aim to promote research in banking, insurance, capital markets, funds management and fintech to train up people in these fields.

At present, foreign universities are not permitted to set up a campus on the Indian mainland. They have generally been operating under various other structures such as IP licensing, credit transfers, collaborations and twinning arrangements. Earlier attempts to allow their presence in India have run into hurdles over reciprocity and regulatory concerns. With Gift City, a door has finally been opened.