Indian Cities in Top 10 List of World’s Fastest Growing Cities

India is home to top 10 fastest growing cities in the world, according to a global economic research report. 

The report ranks cities from around the world that will have the highest year-on-year gross domestic product (GDP) growth in the next 20 years. According to it, the urban powerhouses of the next two decades are not megacities like New York or Shanghai, but India’s emerging tier II and tier III cities such as Surat, Nagpur, Agra, and Vijaywada.

India’s three metro cities – Bangalore, Chennai, and Hyderabad too find a place in the top 10 list due to the rapid growth in technology and start-up environment.

Investing in India’s emerging cities

The economic boom has spurred fast track development across India. As the country grows, the rising disposable income and better infrastructure are likely to increase consumption and purchasing power in smaller cities and generate faster growth. Industry reports predict that by 2025, tier II and III towns will account for 45 percent of India’s consumption and will add 30 percent of affluent households.

The unmet demand in these cities offer immense opportunities for businesses looking for new markets to grow and tap into one of the world’s largest earning populations.

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Besides, there are various other advantages that smaller cities offer over big metropolitan cities, chief among them are cheaper real estate and affordable labor that helps businesses reduce costs.

Investing in lower tier cities, however, comes with its own set of challenges in terms of infrastructure and connectivity. Businesses looking to expand to these cities must, therefore, carefully consider their options.

Below is the list of top 10 fastest growing cities in India.

Surat

With an estimated average growth rate of 9.2 percent, Surat is set to be the fastest growing city in the world. Located in the state of Gujarat, the city houses a population of about 4.46 million and is the eight largest urban area in the country.

Surat is the largest diamond processing hub in the world and accounts for about 90 percent of the world’s diamond cutting and polishing exports. The city is also well known for its textile industry, which is mainly associated with yarn production, weaving, processing as well as embroidery.

Major domestic companies with operations in the city include ONGC, GAIL, Ambuja Cement, Ultratech Cement, and Reliance Industries.

Agra

The home of the Taj Mahal, Agra is one of the most popular cities in the state of Uttar Pradesh. The city is a growing hub for hospitality and is ideal for business in tourism, textile, automobile, as well as manufacturing.

Agra also has a thriving small scale industry sector connected to leather goods and iron foundries

Bengaluru

Bengaluru (or Bangalore) is the information technology capital of India and is often branded as the Silicon Valley of India. Several big players in technology and services – such as Goldman Sachs, Cisco, HP as well as India-based giants like Tata, Infosys, and Wipro have their operations set up in the city. As the natural hub for technology start-ups, Bengaluru has attracted the highest quantum of start-up investments at an annual average of US$4 billion over the last three years.

The clustering of aerospace, defense, machine tools, electronics-related industries, and biotech companies has also made it the aerospace and bio-tech center of the country.  

Besides, Bengaluru has a booming retail market and is the first destination of many global consumer brands. In the past few years, the city has seen high growth in the healthcare, automotive, textiles/apparel, as well as construction industries. 

Hyderabad

Like Bangalore, Hyderabad too has positioned itself as India’s major technology and entrepreneurial hub. The city houses a major technology township- the HITECH city, a tech oriented cyber city, as well as India’s largest start-up ecosystem – T-Hub, which started in 2015.

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The city is home to over 1500 IT companies, including Apple, Microsoft, Google, Yahoo, Infosys, and Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) among others.

Hyderabad is also known as ‘City of Pearls’ for its famous trading center of pearls. Other key industries include bio-pharmaceuticals, handicraft, and real estate.

Nagpur

Nagpur is an emerging metropolis and an important industrial city in Maharashtra.  The city has more than 22,000 Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSME) and is set to be the next IT hub, with Infosys and TCS setting up their campuses in Multimodal International Hub Airport (MIHAN) area.

Agriculture (in particular oranges and ayurvedic medicine processing) forms a large share of its economy. Other sectors include information technology, manufacturing, transport systems, mining and power generation.

Some of the companies that form an integral part of the city’s business and economy include Hyundai, Unitech, and Videocon washing machine plants.  

The city is also important for the banking sector and hosts the regional office of the Reserve Bank of India.

Tiruppur

Tiruppur is India’s knitwear industry hub and accounts for about 46 percent of the total cotton knitwear garment exports from the country. Located in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu, Tiruppur’s average growth is predicted to rise by 8.36 percent per year between 2019 and 2035.

However, according to local textile industrialists, such growth is possible only if the government provides adequate infrastructure and required support to the apparel industry. Tiruppur’s multi-crore textile industry is currently staring at existential crisis due to the implementation of GST and demonetization.

Rajkot

The fourth largest city in Gujarat after Ahmedabad, Surat, and Vadodara, Rajkot is the 35th largest urban agglomeration in India. It is the sixth fastest growing urban area in India and 22nd globally.

The city hosts several small scale manufacturing industries including bearings, diesel engines, automtaive parts, machine tools, metal forging, trade centre, foundries, and jewelry export. The city is globally known for its casting and forging industries.

Besides, the city has about 500 foundry units that cater to the casting requirements of the local diesel engine industry. Most foundry units produce grey iron castings for the domestic market. Rajkot is also famous for its textile printing units.

The city is now emerging as a center for software and ITeS with several software companies setting up their operations and development centers in the area.

Trichy

Tiruchirappalli or Trichy is an industrial city in Tamil Nadu. A hub of technological, educational and agricultural activities, the city boasts of high-tech production units like BHEL, which produces critical engineering products and components.

The city is also known for its industrial, engineering equipment manufacturing, and software exports.

Chennai

Chennai, the capital city of Tamil Nadu, has the third-highest GDP per capita in India. The city is the centre of almost 40 percent of India’s automobile industry and is often called ‘the Detroit of India’. It is also popular for software, IT-enabled sevrices, hardware manufacturing, as well as engineering and procurement industry. Other major industries include petrochemicals, textiles, leather products, and financial services.

Chennai is a choice location for several global corporations including American Express, Citibank, and IT service companies such as Cognizant, and TCS.

Vijayawada

Vijayawada is the second largest city and an important metropolitan of Andhra Pradesh. The city is one of the major business centres of the state and is famous for processing of agricultural products such as cotton and turmeric, automobile body building, hardware, textile, consumer goods, and small-scale industries.

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