Mumbai, Delhi, 7 other Indian cities in JLL's global 300

New Delhi: Mumbai, Delhi and seven other Indian cities have featured in the list of 300 global cities for being in the focus of commercial activity and interest, according to property consultant JLL.

The consultant has released the latest edition of 'Global 300' cities the annual ranking exercise that represents 300 major cities that are the focus of commercial activity and interest, 40 per cent of the world's economy, and three- quarters of global real estate investment.

Bangalore, Chennai, Kolkata, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad, Pune and Surat are the other cities to have found a place in the list.

"While the mega cities of Delhi and Mumbai rank in the 'Global Top 30' thanks largely to their huge scale, other cities such as Bangalore, Chennai and Kolkata sit within the 'Global Top 100' ? with Hyderabad sitting just outside," JLL India said in a statement.

Mumbai (17th) is among the 20 largest cities in the world by gross domestic product (GDP), while Delhi is at the 22nd place. Both these cities have a GDP of more than USD 400 billion.

This also makes them the fifth and sixth largest cities in Asia, respectively, only behind Tokyo, Shanghai, Seoul and Jakarta.

In terms of corporate presence, Mumbai comes ahead of San Francisco, Shanghai, Sydney, Singapore, Washington, Atlanta, Toronto etc, while Delhi is ahead of cities like Guangzhou and Frankfurt.

Corporate presence is based purely on number of headquarters of the Forbes 2,000 list.

"Although some attention is starting to turn to the country, India?s cities are not large recipients of direct real estate investment ? given the difficulties in accessing stock and market transparency," JLL said.

Mumbai sees similar investment volumes to cities such as Guangzhou and Mexico City ? but just 5 per cent of those seen in Shanghai (USD 37 billion) and 10 per cent of those seen in Beijing (USD 18 billion).

Over the past three years, Mumbai has attracted USD 1.7 billion of real estate investment, while Delhi has seen USD 0.6 billion.

"This puts both cities outside the ?Global Top 100? real estate investment destinations, despite their scale. These markets are dominated by domestic players, rather than international investors," the statement said.

These lower rankings suggest that, while Mumbai and Delhi have the scale to match their global counterparts, they are underperforming in terms of direct real estate investment.

However, the consultant said that a number of key policy-level changes taken by the government in recent times such as RERA, REITs, simplification of taxation, easing of FDI restrictions, are expected to boost investments.