How to Distribute GIFT City Funds: What Creso Offers MFDs

The retail investor base in GIFT City schemes grew 177% in a single quarter, per IFSCA data reported by Outlook Money. It hit 3,438 by March 2026, up from 1,239 in December 2025. Six months before that, the count was just 255. More than 20 retail funds were registered by December 2025, with fund AUM crossing USD 2 billion. If GIFT City itself is still new to you, start with our pillar guide, GIFT City explained: a distributor's guide for 2026, then come back here for the distribution mechanics.

Empanelment is a one-time hurdle. Visibility is the daily one.

There are several retail GIFT City schemes already live, with new ones launching regularly. Each has its own IFSC branch, empanelment process, onboarding workflow, and portal, creating unnecessary operational complexity.

Creso removes this friction. One partnership with Creso provides access to all participating schemes, eliminating the need for separate empanelments, onboarding processes, and portal integrations for each one.

But while empanelment is a problem you solve once, the real challenge is the information you need every single working day.

Where do you check today's NAV on the Parag Parikh IFSC S&P 500 FoF? How do you show a client how DSP Global Equity has performed against a Nasdaq 100 FoF since inception? What dollar rate did the last remittance actually convert at? Where does that GIFT City holding sit alongside the client's domestic SIPs when you sit down for a review?

When you go directly through each AMC, the answers are scattered across factsheets, AMC emails, and MFCentral. MFCentral is useful for a consolidated mutual fund statement, but it does not provide the fund-level information MFDs need for GIFT City schemes. There is no NAV history you can chart, no way to compare two funds side by side, and no forex context. For a category this new, the data simply is not surfaced anywhere an MFD can use it in front of a client.

That gap is where Creso adds the most value. Here's how going direct to each AMC compares with using Creso across the tasks you perform every day. 

One platform for inbound and outbound GIFT City funds

Creso puts both directions of GIFT City on the same shelf, all set up as retail schemes under the IFSCA Fund Management Regulations, 2025. Outbound funds give your resident clients dollar-denominated global exposure. Inbound funds give NRIs and other non-residents India exposure without mainland paperwork.
To check out which funds are live, check out our guides to live outbound GIFT City retail funds and live inbound GIFT City retail funds.

Outbound: fully online, like net banking

For outbound funds, the entire journey on Creso is digital. Your resident client remits dollars under the RBI's Liberalised Remittance Scheme, up to USD 250,000 per financial year. The onboarding and transaction flow feels like net banking. KYC runs on PAN and Aadhaar. No foreign brokerage account, no GIFT City bank account, no manual forex management.

One planning note you should raise before the client wires anything: remittances above ₹10 lakh in a financial year attract 20% TCS. That is advance tax, reclaimable at ITR filing, but it is a real cash-flow drag on larger allocations.

Inbound: mostly online, with the offline parts named upfront

Inbound is currently not entirely digital. Some steps are still offline because specific AMCs require physical documentation for certain non-resident checks like IPV-OSV. Creso supports everything the AMC allows online, which is the majority of the flow, and tells you exactly which steps need wet ink before you start. No surprises three days into an NRI onboarding.

The product case for inbound is unusually strong. A non-resident investor in a qualifying GIFT City scheme pays no Indian capital gains tax under Section 10(4D) and faces no TDS at redemption. Many structures need no PAN, no demat and no Indian bank account. Money goes in and comes out in dollars. Eligibility runs wider than NRIs too: any non-resident from a FATF-compliant jurisdiction qualifies, currently excluding the US and Canada.

Distribute GIFT City funds without per-AMC empanelment

This is a big operational unlock. You do not empanel with each GIFT City AMC individually. Creso's distribution arrangements cover the AMC relationships, so one partnership gives you the full shelf. The empanelment paperwork that would take weeks across six AMC branches collapses into one signup.

Onboarding as a partner is fast for the same reason. Instead of six approval queues, there is one. The distributors who move quickest treat GIFT City as an extension of their existing Creso practice, not a separate business line. On the platform, that is what it is.

Handholding on tax, ops and client questions

GIFT City sits at the intersection of FEMA, LRS, IFSCA regulations and the Income Tax Act, and you’ll want to answer client’s queries across all four. Is TCS a cost or an advance? Does an outbound fund go into Schedule FA? Why is the fund taxed at its own level? You can read about these on our GIFT Playbook for Distributors. 

You do not need to hold all of this in your head. Creso's team handles tax, operations and query support end to end, from the first client objection to the redemption payout. On top of that sits the education stack: webinars for partner MFDs present on our platform (recordings available if you miss it), and a growing library of published guides. To educate yourself on GIFT City, you can start with the distributor's guide to GIFT City, then the comparison of feeder funds vs IBKR vs GIFT City for global investing. (That second one arms you for the "why not just use Interactive Brokers" conversation). 

One view of India and global money

Fragmented products create fragmented reporting, and clients feel it first. A client with domestic SIPs, a SIF allocation and a GIFT City fund would otherwise get three statements in two currencies from three systems.

On Creso, GIFT fund pages offer all information you need about the fund at a glance: Live updated NAV, AUM, past performance/trailing returns of the fund, market exposure, minimum investment, fund managers, exit load, etc. 

Additionally, GIFT holdings and transactions sit in the same portfolio view as mutual funds and SIFs, for both you and the client. The client sees their India and global spread in one place. You see the same thing across your entire book, which changes review conversations: "your US allocation is 12% of the total" beats juggling factsheets mid-meeting. Order tracking is real-time on the platform itself, so a pending GIFT City purchase shows its status the same way a domestic lump sum does.

Single commission payout across MF, SIF and GIFT

Commissions follow the same consolidation logic. Whatever you earn across mutual funds, SIFs and GIFT City schemes arrive as one payout, with one statement to reconcile instead of separate cycles per AMC.

The GIFT City economics are worth knowing precisely, and you can refer to our material as linked above.  

Earlier in your journey? Our guide on how to become a mutual fund distributor in India covers the foundations before any of this applies.