Bengaluru to become fastest-growing city as global companies home in on talent: Savills Exec

New Delhi: Global corporations are increasingly looking at a more diverse range of locations to tap into the talent they need, and India has a real opportunity, as its average age is much lower and its talent pool is rapidly growing, said Rick Schuham, CEO, Global Occupier Services, Savills.

Bengaluru has been ranked the world’s fastest-growing major city by 2035, according to an analysis by global real estate adviser Savills across multiple economic indicators, including city gross domestic product (GDP) growth through to 2035, personal wealth growth, population dependency ratio and inward migration.

Several other Indian cities feature in the top 20 in the Savills Resilient Cities Index, which examined the economic prospects of 245 cities worldwide to identify the most dynamic real estate and investment markets of the next decade.


New York, Tokyo, London and Seoul continue to be the world’s most resilient cities, while San Francisco moved up to the fifth place from eighth in the index. Locations in regions such as southern Europe and parts of the US progressed up the rankings, demonstrating that more mid-sized cities are able to pivot and adjust quickly to macro trends.

“So, cities like New York and London remain super important, particularly for front-office, client-facing teams, but actually we see a real spectrum of locations. We have categorised some of the Indian cities as emerging innovation engines,” said Schuham.

Referring to Indian cities, Paul Tostevin, head of Savills World Research, said, “Bengaluru, for example, is set to become the fastest developing city among those we measured in the next 10 years. Let’s add 3 million people to its population. We have only looked at cities with GDP greater than $50 billion in the analysis. We have got Chennai in there, a slightly smaller economy, but very strong GDP growth and GDP growth per capita. Hyderabad, set to see the fastest GDP per capita growth of any city, is in the index. A clear sort of momentum story among these Indian cities.”

Cities in the Asia-Pacific dominate the findings, accounting for three-quarters of the top 50 and 85% of the top 20 fastest-growing cities globally.

Beyond India, Vietnam and China also account for multiple cities in the top 20, with Manila and Kuala Lumpur also featuring.

Savills said that these high-growth cities are likely to see their real estate markets rapidly evolve to meet increasing demand, presenting significant opportunities for investors and developers across sectors.

“The uncertainty is actually the premise of our study, and it points to those more resilient locations where you have got depth and breadth, whether it is talent or corporate occupiers, or the broader sort of climate piece as well. I think it is all part of that narrative. One of the things that they have said in this study is that volatility or uncertainty is here to stay. It is not going to go away,” said Tostevin.

The demand to set up global capability centres in India will continue, he added.

“Immigration policies across Europe or the US are all going to feed into what the future holds here,” said Schuham. “The past is not always the predictor of the future, but your trajectory is pretty good, to say the least. The scale and size of what has been done over the last 10 years, it is hard to get your mind around it until you see it in person and you see it live. I think it is a story that many people, most people in the business community globally know.”