The Wealth Company launches GIFT City Fund to offer overseas investors India mutual fund exposure

The Wealth Company has launched The Wealth Company IFSC FoF, an open-ended Category III Alternative Investment Fund based in GIFT City IFSC, designed to give eligible non-resident investors, including NRIs, a single, US-dollar-denominated route to a professionally managed portfolio of Indian mutual funds and ETFs.

With this, The Wealth Company has forayed into the Category III AIF segment, marking another significant step in expanding its alternative investment platform and offering sophisticated investors access to differentiated, strategy driven investment opportunities.

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The fund is managed by Wealth Company Asset Management Private Limited (IFSC Branch), a fund management entity registered with IFSCA.

The timing reflects the scale of India’s investment transformation. Indian mutual fund assets stood at Rs 82.22 lakh crore as of June 30, 2026, up from Rs 13.81 lakh crore a decade earlier, almost a six-fold increase. SIP contributions reached Rs 31,781 crore in June 2026, according to AMFI.

While India’s domestic investor base has expanded rapidly, global Indians have not always had an equally straightforward way to participate in that growth.

Overall, India now has more than 50 AMCs and over 1,700 active mutual fund schemes, creating a market where the challenge is no longer simply access. It is selection deciding which managers, categories and strategies deserve capital, and when that allocation needs to change. That is the gap The Wealth Company IFSC FoF is designed to address.

Rather than investing directly into individual Indian mutual fund schemes, the FoF will select and allocate across the wider mutual fund and ETF universe. Its investment process evaluates schemes using factors including historical performance, risk metrics, quantitative parameters, relative performance and forward-looking market positioning.

The portfolio can span diversified equity-oriented funds, sectoral strategies, fixed income funds, hybrid funds, gold and silver ETFs, index strategies and SIFs, subject to the fund’s mandate.

The objective is straightforward: give an overseas investor one professionally managed India allocation rather than asking them to become an expert in India’s entire mutual fund industry.

“India’s growth has stopped being a story that Indians only watch from abroad. For many, it is becoming an opportunity they want to participate in,” said Madhu Lunawat, Founder, The Wealth Company.

“GIFT City gives us the ability to build that bridge. We want an Indian living overseas to think about India as part of their long-term wealth portfolio and not as a market that is difficult to access from where they live,” Lunawat further said.

According to the fund house, for an NRI in Dubai, Singapore, London, Australia or any other global financial centre, the attraction is not simply the familiarity of investing in India. It is the ability to participate in India’s growth through a structure designed specifically for non-resident investors.

The fund is denominated in US dollars and is structured through GIFT City IFSC. Eligible investors do not separately need to undertake the SEBI FPI registration process merely to access the underlying Indian mutual fund portfolio through the FoF structure.

The fund’s materials also state that an NRI investor may not have an Indian income-tax return filing obligation where the relevant conditions are met, including applicable tax deduction and the absence of other circumstances requiring a return.

The structure is intended for eligible global family offices, institutional allocators, accredited investors and HNI/UHNI non-residents. It does not accept resident Indians and currently excludes investors resident in the USA and Canada, as well as investors from FATF-restricted jurisdictions. For the wider NRI community, the proposition is therefore less about creating another investment product and more about creating a dedicated bridge between global Indian wealth and India’s domestic capital markets.

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Taxation

Tax is another consideration for overseas investors. The fund is structured as an IFSC-based Category III AIF and is expected to qualify as a “Specified Fund” under the applicable provisions of the Income-tax Act, 2025, subject to satisfaction of the prescribed conditions.

For eligible non-resident investors, distributions by the fund and capital gains arising on transfer or redemption of fund units may be exempt from Indian income tax, subject to the applicable statutory conditions. Further, eligible non-resident investors who satisfy the prescribed conditions may also benefit from relaxations relating to PAN and filing of an Indian income-tax return, including where they have no other income chargeable to tax in India and the prescribed investor information and tax-deduction requirements are complied with.

The availability of these benefits is subject to the Fund satisfying the conditions applicable to a specified fund and to the individual circumstances of each investor.

The fund may be of particular interest to investors based in jurisdictions such as the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain, Oman, Uganda and Mauritius; however, the tax treatment in each investor's home jurisdiction is subject to the investor's individual circumstances and should be evaluated with the investor's own tax advisor.

“The problem for a non-resident investor isn’t a lack of conviction about India. It is the distance between conviction and execution,” said Unmesh Kulkarni, Managing Director – Group Product Head, The Wealth Company. “There are more than 1,600 schemes to choose from, different market cycles and very different investment styles. Our job is to do that selection and rebalancing within a structure that makes sense for an overseas investor.”

(Disclaimer: Recommendations, suggestions, views and opinions given by the experts are their own. These do not represent the views of The Economic Times)

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