Work on the first phase of the super ambitious, glitzy, global financial hub Gujarat International Finance Tec-City (GIFT) near Gandhinagar is expected to start this month.

GIFT will come up on 500 acres and will have a Special Economic Zone(SEZ), international education zone, integrated townships, an entertainment zone, hotels, a convention centre, an international techno park, software technology park of India(STPI) units, shopping malls, stock exchanges and services units. It would also function as an integrated city-centre with extensive residential, commercial and public spaces.

Chief Minister Shree Narendra Modi hopes the central business district would rival Tokyo, Shanghai, Paris and London, say officials.

In all, GIFT is expected to have a cluster of 17 high-rise commercial buildings, with the tallest being the signature 80 storey, 400 meter Diamond Tower.

The project would have more than 80 million square feet of built-up area in a highly concentrated and vertical form.

To be developed along the Sabarmati River, GIFT would have advanced facilities like inner city light rail transit systems (LRTS), dedicated and guaranteed power and water facilities and central cooling services.

The first phase of the project, covering 25 million square feet, is scheduled to be operational by mid-2010.

Pre-construction activities like road building in the neighborhood of the project site have started. Fifteen million square feet of the floor space of the first phase has been secured by a host of national and international companies.

The idea of GIFT was born during the Vibrant Gujarat Summit, 2007 and is being planned by East China Architectural Design and Research Institute (EXADI), which is responsible for planning much of Shanghai, and Fairwood Consultants India. Yao Wen Lin, ECADI board chairman, has been quoted as saying that GIFT’s design would excel Shanghai, say state government officials.

The project is being implemented by Gujarat International Finance Tec-City Company Ltd, a joing venture between the state run Gujarat Urban Development Company (GUDC) and infrastructure Lease and Financial Services (IL&FS).

The union government has cleared the SEZ to be developed over 250 acres of the project area.

The rest would be a Domestic Tariff Area (DTA), which would function as a domestic financial district with a separate technology park, finance and tech services, an export-oriented undertaking park, a domestic market zone and domestic utilities.

The multi-service SEZ, which is expected to attract Rs.150 billion($3.8 billion) in investments, is targeting exports worth $1 billion in the first three years beginning 2010, when the first phase of the project will become operational.

Current projections estimate that exports will double to #2 billion by 2015 and $3 billion by 2020. A total job creation of one million is estimated by 2020, officials say.

As of now, five types of businesses have been contemplated – a global BPO centre, operations hub for domestic financial services providing mid-office and back-office related activities, a global IT hub for financial services, a global research and development centre for emerging sectors like pharmaceuticals and a financial centre for selected product markets.