Context

American professional services and investment management company Jones Lang LaSalle Incorporated or JLL has released its 6th City Momentum Index.

About

Highlights

• Bengaluru is the world’s most dynamic city among 131 major established and emerging business hubs globally.
• Closely following Bengaluru is Hyderabad that is ranked second with Delhi (4th), Pune (5th), and Chennai (7th) featuring in top 10 cities. At 15th position, Kolkata was the sixth Indian city ranked amongst top 20.
• With 19 of the top 20 cities from Asia Pacific, the rankings highlight and showcase the region’s continued rapid urbanization and strong economic growth.
• Asia continues to show strong momentum, with cities that are successfully expanding their innovation economy punching above their weight in terms of attracting capital, companies and people.

What is special about 2019 ranking?

    Bangaluru and Hyderabad

• Both Bengaluru and Hyderabad have a thriving information technology and start-up culture which has helped them top the rankings. As the Silicon Valley of India, Bengaluru has continued to witness much traction in its real estate sector over the years.
• Backed by a strong commercial sector, the city’s retail, hospitality and residential sectors have also gained prominence with the city being recognized as the third largest hospitality market and the leading retail market in India.
• Hyderabad as an emerging investment destination has been in the spotlight for its growth potential and investments from all major technology led companies around the globe. The real estate market of Hyderabad has been one of the best performing in India for last few years in terms of the absorption and new launches.

What is the methodology for ranking?

• JLL’s City Momentum Index measures momentum for 131 of the world’s most commercially active cities by tracking a range of socio-economic and commercial real estate indicators over a three-year period to identify the urban economies and real estate markets undergoing the most rapid expansion.
• The City Momentum Index presents a weighted overall score for the sub-scores of 20 variables. For each variable the model calculates a score based on the city’s performance relative to the distribution of all 131 city regions, scaled from zero to one.
• The top-scoring city for each variable has a value of one, while the lowest-scoring city receives a value of zero. Variables focus on indicators of socio-economic momentum and commercial real estate momentum.
• All real-estate data is sourced to JLL. Non-real estate data is drawn from a wide range of sources that includes Oxford Economics, United Nations, ACI, GaWC and fDi Markets. The Index also sources data from many national statistical offices.

What is the special note on India?

• Some of India’s fastest growing cities have been successful in recent years in drawing high levels of foreign direct investment with structural reforms also encouraging greater interest from foreign real estate investors who are seeking to tap into the country’s favourable growth dynamics.
• Post the implementation of landmark policy reforms such as RERA and GST coupled with a focus on improving infrastructure and improving ease of doing business, the government’s reforms driven agenda and measures are expected to bring in more transparency in the real estate sector and give a strong impetus to the sector.