Thane's king of the suburbs

NEW DELHI: Call it what you will — a satellite town, a city’s outskirts, neighbourhood or purlieu. But suburbs in India have clearly come out on their own to become big enough markets in themselves.

New consumers, new industries and new money form the holy trinity driving consumption from Noida, Gandhinagar and Haora to Kancheepuram.

In this second part of the three-part ET series on ‘Cities Of Growth’ in exclusive partnership with New Delhi-based Indicus Analytics’ City Skyline of India ’06, we present the biggest growth suburbs for next year. And there are quite a few surprises here. Contrary to popular perceptions, New Delhi’s tony suburb of Gurgaon is not the fastest growing satellite town in India.

The credit for that goes to Thane, where additional consumer spend in ’07-08 will grow by Rs 2,942 crore. Thane will add around two Gurgaons (total annual consumer spend at Rs 1,525 crore) next year!

Why, even the perceptibly not-so-hot northern suburbs of Kolkata in Salt Lake and Dum Dum together are almost 20 times the size of Gurgaon already. And Delhi’s old and now uncelebrated satellites in Faridabad and Noida are already five and two-and-half times bigger than Gurgaon, respectively, with absolute growth for next year more than double that of Gurgaon.

Urban areas of North 24 Parganas, Rangareddi, Faridabad, Noida, Gandhinagar, Kancheepuram, Haora, Gurgaon and urban areas of South 24 Parganas (in Alipore) make up the rest of the top 10 in our growth suburbs for ’07-08.

Not so surprisingly, a majority of suburbs (six in our top 10 list) are growing much faster than the mother-city. At 9.8%, Thane leads Mumbai (9%) by almost a percentage point in annualised growth till ‘15, Salt Lake & Dum Dum (7.6%) pip Kolkata (4.9%) by a handsome 2.7%, Hyderabad (8%) trails Rangareddi (9.2%) by over 1%.

Perhaps the big consolation for Gurgaon to make up on its still small market size is its highest expected growth rate, 13.6%, among the top 10 suburbs.

Not all suburbs are growing faster than their parent towns. Faridabad, Kancheepuram, Haora and urban areas of South 24 Parganas (essentially Alipore) have an annualised growth rate (till ‘15) lower than their respective parent towns. So, while Delhi will grow by 10%, Faridabad will average just 7.1%.

Kancheepuram, at 4.6%, will lag Chennai (8%) by a huge 3.4%, and Haora & Alipore will just about catch up with Kolkata (4.7% versus 4.9%).