4 CHENNAI
City City Bang Bang!
Why does Chennai get more bad press than it deserves?

Not yet there: Though the city has everything going for it

It can lay legitimate claim to being the Detroit of India (if there is still merit in being likened to that American city). It produces more engineers a year than most other cities in the country. It has been, for at least the past 12 months, the most happening it services hub in the country. It isn't a bad place to live, and boasts some of the best educational institutions in the country. And, despite taking a knock or two from 2004's tsunami and last year's floods, it remains one of the safest places to do business in India. So, why does Chennai not figure at #1 or #2, even #3 on this magazine's listing of the best cities for business? Actually, no one knows (and just to add to the preamble, Chennai also boasts the first special economic zone that is a result of a public-private partnership, Mahindra City; and in March 2006, Nokia inaugurated its first manufacturing facility in India, at Sri Perambudur on the outskirts of the city). "Chennai is good for manufacturing," says Suresh Krishna, Chairman and Managing Director, Sundram Fasteners, adding a caveat about the only spoiler being the city's distance from markets. Jukka Lehtela, the man in charge of Nokia's Indian manufacturing operations, speaks fondly of a government (it has since been voted out of power) that "acted faster than they spoke". And A. Gururaj, General Manager and Director (India), Flextronics, adds that it was the "deep reserve of technical talent in this part of India" that encouraged the company to locate in Chennai.

-Nitya Varadarajan

5 HYDERABAD
Cyberabad Redux
Andhra Pradesh's capital is beginning to get it right.

Work-in-progress: Hyderabad has more than enough room for growth

Andhra Pradesh's chief Minister Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy is out to prove that it is possible for Cyberabad (as the city was popularly referred to during the previous regime led by the Telugu Desam's Nara Chandrababu Naidu) to co-exist with the larger state of Andhra Pradesh. Thus, the Chief Minister is busy announcing sops for farmers one minute, signing memoranda of understanding with investors wishing to put down a chip FAB another (for the record, the latter, the famed Fab City project, will be up by 2009 and involve a total investment of $3 billion or Rs 14,100 crore). "In the next three years, this will be the #1 state in the country," says Reddy. "The availability of good talent, especially technical, and the relatively low cost of living are all making Hyderabad an attractive destination for business," adds Satish Reddy, Chief Operating Officer, Dr Reddy's Labs. Signs of urban renewal abound in the city: new and work-in-progress flyovers, a new international airport, a proposed ring road that will circumscribe Hyderabad, even a Metro rail project. There's still the complaint about inadequate nightlife; then, that should follow.

-E. Kumar Sharma

6 KOLKATA
Comeback Capital
Red citadel (re)discovers joys of business.

Look East: With the left doing a hard sell

Once, it was one of India's most important centres of commerce, home to some of the country's best-known business families, and the headquarters of several boxwallah companies. Then, things changed; the communists (now into their 30th uninterrupted year of rule) underestimated the importance of commerce, infrastructure crumbled, and businesses, businessmen, even bright young people in search of better prospects, fled Kolkata in numbers. Things seem to have come full circle now, though, with current Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee singing a different, and more business-friendly, tune (to the extent that he has even used terms like contract farming, once reckoned to be a four-letter word in the lexicon of the communists). The Tata Group, both Ambani brothers, and a clutch of other businesses and businessmen, have announced plans to invest in the city (some Rs 6,000 crore thus far in 2006-07) and the state of West Bengal. "With surplus power, good connectivity, reasonably low real estate prices, increasing purchasing power and a low level of communal disharmony, Kolkata is set to be one of the most investment-friendly destinations in the country," says Sanjoy Budhia, Managing Director, Patton Industries. The city has already emerged a sort of hub for it services and BPO industries in the East (and India's National Association of Software and Service Companies or nasscom says it has reason to believe that attrition rates here are far lower than elsewhere in the country).

-Ritwik Mukherjee

7 PUNE
The 'It' Factor
It takes something beyond infrastructure to make a city, and this one has that.

Traffic notwithstanding: Pune is a city on the move

Just as Amit Kalyani, executive Director, Bharat Forge, had warned (and wished for), this writer was stuck at a railway crossing outside the company's factory (and several other factories) for over 30 minutes. Pune's traffic is probably the worst in all India, the city is plagued by endemic power cuts (eight to 12 hours long, and several big factories do not draw power from the grid during peak hours to make life easier for the residents of the city) and Tarun Malaviya, Founder-CEO of e-mail software hotshop Mithi would, for once, like the city administration to make up its mind. "One day they want to be 'Detroit of the East', and the next day the 'Oxford of the East'," he laughs. "It would make things easier if they could make up their minds." "We are lucky that Pune is connected by the best road in the country to the best port in the country," says Kalyani, "but it still takes my trucks three hours to travel the 10-odd km to the expressway." (He adds that Bharat Forge's new plant will not be in Pune). So, what does Pune have going for it? Anand Deshpande, CEO, Persistent Systems, maintains that it is "the most entrepreneurial city in India". "Bangalore and Hyderabad are about the big names," he adds. "Pune supports companies like ours (around 2,600 people), even much smaller than us." "Pune has a lot of young people wanting to work in companies like ours," says Mithi's Malaviya (total workforce: 32). And Kalyani points out that despite all its problems, Bharat Forge's Pune plant is "the best and most efficient plant" across all the company's factories. "There is no telling what this city can do if it got the right infrastructure."

-Kushan Mitra

8 AHMEDABAD
The Day-after City
Gujarat's capital may be at #8 in this listing, but it suffers serious image problems.

But for the riots: The City could be #2

In recent times, Gujarat has been through an earthquake, communal riots and floods. There are also allegations in several quarters that the state has sponsored pogroms targeted at a particular community. The prime casualty of all these has been Ahmedabad's standing, notwithstanding the relatively high rank it has achieved here, as a centre of business. Without the riots, Ahmedabad, given that its infrastructure is arguably better than that of several southern cities that are riding the it-wave, and its real estate less expensive than that in most other cities of its size, could well have been among the best cities for business in the country (not #1, perhaps, but a definite contender for #2 although this would have also required the city, which missed the it wave, to do some serious catching up). Of signs of urban renewal, there are aplenty in Ahmedabad: wider roads, new malls, a new commercial district replete with a 25-storey hotel-cum-convention-centre (India's largest); and a Rs 1,000-crore riverfront project along the banks of the Sabarmati. The city, always renowned for its institutes of higher learning (IIM, NID, the state universities, and institutes run by the Nirma and Reliance groups) is a great place to do business, insists Vishnu Varshney, Managing Director, Gujarat Venture Finance Ltd (GVFL). His rationale? "Cheap real estate and good infrastructure." Even on the infrastructure front, however, all doesn't seem too well. Consumers in Ahmedabad pay as much as Rs 7.50 for a unit of power (possibly the highest in India, and the only upside is that the city almost never suffers a power outage).

-Kushan Mitra

9 MYSORE
Bangalore Shadow
Proximity can well make a best city for business.

Poor sibling: Mysore is trying hard to catch us

Bangalore is, well, Bangalore. But 140 km to the south of the city is an older, albeit smaller and less-famous sibling that's hoping that some of Bangalore's brand equity rubs off on it (and that it can actually benefit from some of Bangalore's ills). This is Mysore, and as Sid Mookerji, CEO, Software Paradigms, one of the first software firms to set up base in the city claims, "It is better planned in terms of infrastructure and boasts a better quality of life than some large cities." Today, there are some 40 software companies registered with the local STPI (Software Technology Parks of India), and a dozen more are reported to be hunting space in the city (exports have grown from less than Rs 1 crore in the early 1990s to Rs 392 crore in 2005-06). "Mysore is at least 25-30 per cent cheaper than Bangalore across parameters," says R. Guru, Chairman, nr Group, and a former president of the local chamber of commerce. And, with a 250-acre textile park (at Kadkola, on the city's periphery), Mysore is also hoping to feed off Bangalore's status as India's software capital. Whether the infrastructure can cope with all that success is something that only a bit of the commodity (success) can tell.

-Rahul Sachitanand

10 VIZAG
Day-time Destination
Andhra Pradesh's second most important city still has ways to go.

For a city that is in the top 10 in this magazine's listing of the best cities for business, Vizag has a strange shortcoming: planes cannot land in its airport after 3 p.m. (the ostensible reason is that this could pose a security threat to the navy's eastern fleet that is based in the city). Despite that minor blip in connectivity, however, Vizag, its loyalists (and there are plenty of them) swear, has enough going for it. "There is harmony on the industrial relations front here," gushes Y. Siva Sagar Rao, Chairman and Managing Director, Rashtriya Ispat Nigam Ltd (also Vizag Steel). Then, there's the fact that Vizag has enough engineering colleges of its own, and serves as a catchment area for engineers from Orissa. "The main attraction (for us) is the talent pool," says T. Hari, Director and Senior Vice President (HR), Satyam Computer Services, which is looking to grow its operations in the city. And the state government is pushing the city as an alternative hub for the pharmaceuticals industry (capital Hyderabad is already one), something that has encouraged firms like Dr Reddy's Laboratories to make substantial investments in it. All that should count.

-E. Kumar Sharma