Mumbai

Demographics :
Mumbai formerly known as Bombay, is the capital of the Indian state of Maharashtra and the most populous city in the world. With an estimated population of about 13 million in the city and 7 million in the suburbs it forms the world's fifth most populous metropolitan area.

Mumbai is the commercial and entertainment capital of India, and houses important financial institutions, such as the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE), the National Stock Exchange of India (NSE) and the corporate headquarters of many Indian companies. Mumbai attracts migrants from all over India because of the immense employment opportunities, and the relatively high standard of living, making the city a potpourri of various communities and cultures. According to the 2001 census, the population of Mumbai is about 12 million with the population of the urban agglomerate exceeding 16 million. The World Gazetteer estimates the 2007 population of the city and the metropolitan area to be 13 and 20 million respectively.

Economy :
Mumbai serves as an important economic hub of the country, contributing 10% of all factory employment, 40% of all income tax collections, 60% of all customs duty collections, 20% of all central excise tax collections, 40% of India's foreign trade and Rupees 40 billion (US$ 9 billion) in corporate taxes.Mumbai's per-capita income is Rs.48,954 which is almost three times the national average.

Many of India's numerous conglomerates (including State Bank Of India, Tata Group, Godrej and Reliance, and four of the Fortune Global 500 companies are based in Mumbai. Many foreign banks and financial institutions also have branches in this area. Up until the 1980s, Mumbai owed its prosperity largely to textile mills and the seaport, but the local economy has since been diversified to include engineering, diamond-polishing, healthcare and information technology.

Along with the rest of India, Mumbai, its commercial capital, has witnessed an economic boom since the liberalisation of 1991, the finance boom in the mid nineties and the IT, export, services and BPO boom in this decade.

Mumbai has been ranked 10th among the world's biggest centres of commerce in terms of the financial flow volumes in a survey compiled by Mastercard Worldwide, which takes into consideration size of financial services network besides equity, bond, derivatives and commodity contract transactions.