Jobs, malls & fast cars: Bengaluru closing gap with Mumbai & Delhi-NCR

City fares well in jobs, housing & demographics but badly in traffic, crimes & public transport.

Bengaluru: More shopping malls, highest young population, best job market for freshers and second-largest car market... Bengaluru is fast closing the gap with Mumbai and Delhi-NCR as an economic, employment, and wealth creation hub.

On virtually all parameters, from tax to bank deposits to air traffic, Bengaluru is one of India's top three cities, alongside Delhi-NCR and Mumbai, according to the 'Bengaluru Rising' report released at the Bengaluru Tech Summit on Tuesday.

Bengaluru: The good and the bad

Prepared by nonprofit UnboxingBLR Foundation, the report examines how Bengaluru has changed, how it compares with other Indian and global tech hubs and what lies ahead for it.

While Bengaluru has fared well in job opportunities, pleasant weather, affordable housing, demographics and innovation, it faces challenges due to haphazard growth, traffic congestion, rising crimes and insufficient public transport, the report notes.

Citing under-investment on public infrastructure, the report specifies that Bengaluru has the lowest per-capita municipal budget among India’s major cities, despite ranking third in total municipal budget size.

Referring to data from the National Crime Records Bureau, the report states that Bengaluru recorded the second-highest road accidents (Delhi stood first). And it is the only city that hasn’t reduced road accident deaths in the last 10 years.

"The pace of decline of road accidents in Bengaluru is the third-lowest. Further, deaths in road accidents have increased in the city," the report states.

Bengaluru has 1.1 crore registered vehicles. About 9 in 10 are private vehicles. Between 2017 and 2024, vehicle registrations in the city grew by about 6% annually, with both two- and four-wheelers keeping pace. There was a big jump in construction moving equipment, too, according to the report.

Bengaluru leads in IT services exports, but when it comes to goods exports, it was only about 11% of Greater Mumbai, 19% of Delhi-NCR, and 22% of Chennai in 2022-23. Cotton, airplane parts, medicines, electric inverters, and X-ray tubes contribute the largest pie to goods exports from Bengaluru.