Artha Bharat plans to shift $125 million in funds to Abu Dhabi, recast GIFT

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The funds being restructured are the Artha Global Multiplier Fund, a long-short fund investing in US equities with assets of more than $100 million and the Artha Bharat Absolute Returns Fund, an arbitrage fund managing approximately $25 million

By Avinash Nair

Updated - October 21, 2026 at 08:43 PM.

Sachin Sawrikar, managing partner at Artha Bharat Investment Managers IFSC LLP

Artha Bharat Investment Managers plans to move two investment funds managing more than $125 million to Abu Dhabi and convert their existing GIFT City vehicles into feeder funds, as it seeks to widen investor access and simplify the way resident and non-resident Indians invest in its strategies.

The funds being restructured are the Artha Global Multiplier Fund, a long-short fund investing in US equities with assets of more than $100 million and the Artha Bharat Absolute Returns Fund, an arbitrage fund managing approximately $25 million. The decision was driven by the difficulty of accommodating resident and non-resident Indian investors in a single fund structure under the existing International Financial Services Centre framework, as well as the lower investment threshold in Abu Dhabi, Sachin Sawrikar, managing partner at Artha Bharat Investment Managers IFSC LLP, told businessline on Wednesday.

“Within the structure we intended for these funds, accommodating both groups in a single pool under the IFSC framework was not workable,” Sawrikar added. He also pointed to the difference in minimum investment requirements: the general minimum for restricted schemes in GIFT City is $150,000, compared with $50,000 under Abu Dhabi Global Market’s (ADGM) exempt fund regime for eligible professional clients.

The fundraising challenge is particularly evident in the Absolute Returns Fund, which has not attracted external investors in the 15 months since its launch, Sawrikar said. He attributed this partly to the inability to combine resident and non-resident investors in the same structure, which had materially limited the pool of potential investors and constrained distribution.

Operational challenges

The firm has also raised concerns about the operational burden of making payments to overseas service providers from GIFT City.

“Investors compare jurisdictions on speed of onboarding, ticket size relative to their allocation, and certainty of tax outcome. On operating costs, GIFT City is competitive on premises and staff. The friction lies in cross border services. Payments to overseas law firms, research providers and other vendors require a withholding assessment for each payment, with supporting documentation, and where suppliers contract on a net basis the paying fund or manager bears the gross up cost. In the UAE, the withholding tax rate is currently zero per cent,” Sawrikar said.

The firm plans to launch new funds in ADGM in the first quarter of 2027 and move existing non-resident investors into them with their consent. The existing GIFT City funds will subsequently be converted into feeder funds investing in the new Abu Dhabi funds during the Indian financial year beginning April 2027. “Once the new funds are launched (in Abu Dhabi), we will move the existing investors, who are non-residents, into them with their consent. After that is completed, in the Indian financial year beginning April 2027, we will convert the existing GIFT City funds into feeder funds investing into the ADGM funds and open them to resident Indian investors,” Sawrikar said.

Under this arrangement, non-resident and international investors will invest directly in the Abu Dhabi funds, while resident Indians will access the same strategies through the GIFT City feeder funds.

Operating shift

The restructuring also reflects a broader shift in Artha Bharat’s operating model, with the firm increasingly routing new fund launches through overseas-domiciled master funds rather than establishing them in GIFT City.

“The Artha Bharat Opportunity Fund, the Artha Bharat Infrastructure Fund and the Artha Global Opportunities Fund continue to be managed from GIFT City. We set out to build GIFT City as our global hub, and our first six funds were master funds. That has changed. Most of our new launches at GIFT City are now feeder funds into master funds domiciled elsewhere, and more of our fund managers now work outside GIFT City than within it. In our operating model, portfolio management and trading sit with the master fund, together with the associated expenditure. A feeder hub therefore retains less of the economic value and fewer senior investment roles. GIFT City continues to provide risk management, research and technology support to our group entities in ADGM, Mauritius and Singapore under service agreements,” Sawrikar said.

Artha Bharat has called for tax treatment of outbound funds comparable to that available to Indian equity mutual funds, lower minimum investment thresholds for appropriately qualified investors and simpler compliance for payments to overseas service providers. 

Published on October 21, 2026

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