India’s elite love living in a concrete jungle.
Mumbai houses the maximum population of India’s ultra high-net-worth individuals (UHNWI), with 1,340 residents holding wealth of over $30 million, according to the Global Wealth Report 2017 by London-based residential and commercial property consultancy Knight Frank. Delhi came a distant second, with just 680 super-rich Indians calling the national capital home.
Overall, India is home to 264,300 millionaires. From that group of wealthy people, 6,740 are classified as UHNWIs. Between 2015 and 2016, the country witnessed a 12% increase in its UHNWI population; over the next decade, this group is expected to grow by 150%. On average, every UNHWI in India owns more than three houses.
“India has a resilient, diversified economy; it is not reliant on commodities and its domestic and foreign debt burden is manageable,” Knight Frank’s chief global economist, Andrew Kenningham, wrote in the report.
Surprisingly, India’s tech hub, Bengaluru, didn’t make it as a favourite among millionaires. However, it did see a promising 15% rise in UHNWIs between 2015 and 2016—the same uptick as Hyderabad.
The startup capital “has emerged as an attractive destination for multinational enterprises looking to set up innovation centres and tap into a fresh pool of technology talent,” the report said. Foreign players like Uber, Airbus, and Visa have set up shop alongside homegrown unicorns—billion-dollar private startups—like Flipkart, InMobi, and Mu Sigma in Bengaluru. The research also praised the ”top-class global research institutes such as the Indian Institute of Science, as well as many state-owned research organisations that are turning out the innovative culture and workforce” in the world’s fastest-changing city.