TVS Capital Fund chairman Gopal Srinivasan compares GST with the diamond trade

Diamonds seem to be everywhere — between newspaper pages for scams, in auction houses for staggering amounts and even at an industry event for venture capitalists. The precious stones reared their shiny heads during TVS Capital Fund chairman Gopal Srinivasan’s speech at the forum, when he compared the GST that is slapped on investment funds servicing foreign markets to the diamond trade.

“We look at our business from the lens of the diamond business. When the stones come into the country, we polish them, give them more value and then send them back. It works the same for venture capitalists—money comes into the country, we invest it, multiply it, and we give it back,” he said.

However, what is irksome, he said, was that while services like polishing diamonds and sending them back doesn’t attract GST, it does on the services that VCs provide. “We also polish money and give it back, but that attracts GST. This puzzles the industry,” he added.