Mumbai has become India’s most important business centre, and a contender for the region's most cosmopolitan city.

Expats moving to Mumbai will find the city has plenty going for it: it is culturally and commercially vibrant, literally humming with possibility and the knowledge that anything can be achieved when hard work and self-belief are applied. Perhaps that’s why although it has existed for thousands of years, Mumbai still has the energy of a frontier town.

In a time lapse camera set to ten years ago, viewers could watch Mumbai explode with development and transform from an inconsequential backwater into a major international metropolis. In the flurry of blooming industries and financial giants, the most important city in India has elbowed into the international business big league and became one of the most important expat destinations in the world.

With rapid development comes contradictions and conflicts. First among these is a chronic housing crisis which has created the fourth most expensive property market in the world. Towers housing some of the newest richest people in the world look out to many of the poorest. Even well-paid expats often have difficulty finding suitable accommodation in Mumbai.

 

It’s a city where IT millionaires, chic hotels and boutique restaurants exist in close proximity to slums, beggars and open sewage; where luxurious German sedans are gridlocked into chaotic traffic jams alongside wooden carts and impassive cows.

Expats moving to Mumbai who are initially put off by hardships are usually won over by the ease of assimilating, the absence of a language barrier and a welcoming and gracious culture. There is also a vibrancy to life in Mumbai that makes each day different and stimulating, and of course, there's a palpable energy that comes from working in a city that is going places fast.