Two Indian cities among future business hubs of the world

While New York, London and Hong Kong continue to be world's business hubs, there are some cities that are fast emerging as business centres of the future.

Fortune magazine recently conducted an extensive study and identified 15 cities that will play a major role in the coming years.

Let's take a look at these cities, including two from India.

Ahmedabad

Country: India

Ahmedabad is the largest city and former capital of Gujarat. The city is an administrative centre of Ahmedabad district as well as the judicial capital of Gujarat as the High Court is in Ahmedabad.

With a city population of more than 5.5 million and an extended population of 6.3 million it is the fifth-largest city and seventh-largest metropolitan area of India.

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Though incorporated into the Bombay Presidency during British rule, Ahmedabad remained one of the most important cities in the Gujarat region.

The city established itself as the home of a developing textile industry, which earned it the nickname the Manchester of the East.

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Gurgaon

Country: India

Gurgaon is the second-largest city in the Indian state of Haryana. Gurgaon is the industrial and financial centre of Haryana.

It is located 30km south of capital New Delhi, about 10km from Dwarka Sub City and 268km south of Chandigarh, the state capital.

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Gurgaon has the third-highest per capita income in India after Chandigarh and Mumbai. Gurgaon is also the only Indian city to have successfully distributed electricity connections to all its households.

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Chengdu

Country: China

Chengdu is one of the most important economic, transportation and communication centres in Western China.

According to the 2007 Public Appraisal for Best Chinese Cities for Investment, Chengdu was chosen as one of the top 10 cities to invest in out of a total of 280 urban centres in China.

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Chengdu is becoming one of the favourite cities for investment in western China. Among the world's 500 largest companies, 133 multinational enterprises have had subsidiaries or branch offices in Chengdu by October 2009.

These MNEs include Intel, Cisco, Sony and Toyota that have assembly and manufacturing bases, as well as Motorola, Ericsson, and Microsoft that have R&D centres in Chengdu.

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Chongqing

Country: China

Chongqing is a major city in Southwest China and one of the five national central cities in China. Administratively, it is one of the four direct-controlled municipalities (the other three are Beijing, Shanghai and Tianjin), and the only such municipality in inland China.

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Chongqing is one of the most notable cities for history and culture in China, and serves as the economic centre of the upstream Yangtze area.

It is the major manufacturing centre and a transportation hub for Southwest China.

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Moscow

Country: Russia

Moscow is the capital and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural and scientific centre of Russia and the continent.

Moscow is the northernmost megacity on Earth, the most populous city in Europe, and the sixth-largest city proper in the world.

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Moscow is the undisputed financial centre of Russia and home to the country's largest banks and many of its largest companies, such as Russia's largest company Gazprom. Moscow accounts for 17 per cent of retail sales in Russia and for 13 per cent of all construction activity.

Since the 1998 Russian financial crisis, various business sectors in Moscow have shown exponential rates of growth.

Many new business centres and office buildings have been built in recent years, but Moscow still experiences shortages in office space.

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Bucharest

Country: Romania

Bucharest is the capital municipality, cultural, industrial, and financial centre of Romania. It is the largest city in the country.

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Economically, Bucharest is the most prosperous city in Romania and is one of the main industrial centres and transportation hubs of Eastern Europe.

The city has a broad range of convention facilities, educational facilities, cultural venues, shopping arcades, and recreational areas.

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Riga

Country: Latvia

Riga is the capital and largest city of Latvia. With 657,424 inhabitants, Riga is the largest city of the Baltic states, one of the largest cities in Northern Europe and home to more than one third of Latvia's population.

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Riga, with its central geographic position and concentration of population, has always been the infrastructural hub of Latvia.

Several national roads begin in Riga, and European route E22 crosses Riga from the east and west, while the Via Baltica crosses Riga from the south and north.

Business and leisure travel to Riga have increased significantly in recent years because of improved infrastructure.

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Belgrade

Country: Serbia

Belgrade is the capital and largest city of Serbia. The city is located at the confluence of the Sava and Danube rivers, where the Pannonian Plain meets the Balkans.

Its name in English translates to White city. The city proper has a population of over 1.1 million, while its metropolitan area has over 1.6 million people, making it one of the largest cities in Southeast Europe.

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Belgrade is the financial centre of Serbia, and is home to the country's National Bank. Many notable companies are based in Belgrade, including Jat Airways, Telekom Srbija, Telenor Serbia, Delta Holding, Elektroprivreda Srbije, Komercijalna banka, Ikarbus, regional centers for AXA, Societe Generale, Asus, Intel, Motorola, Dell, Samsung, MTV Adria, Kraft Foods, Carlsberg, Microsoft, OMV, Unilever, Zepter, Japan Tobacco, P&G and many others.

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Minsk

Country: Belarus

Minsk is the capital and largest city in Belarus, situated on the Svislach and Niamiha rivers. Minsk is also a headquarters of the Commonwealth of Independent States.

As the national capital, Minsk has a special administrative status in Belarus.

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Minsk is the economic capital of Belarus. It has developed industrial and services sectors which serve the needs not only of the city, but of the entire nation.

Minsk's contributions form nearly 46 per cent of Belarusian budget.

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Skopje

Country: Macedonia

Skopje is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Macedonia with about a third of the total population. It is the country's political, cultural, economic, and academic centre.

It was known in the Roman period under the name Scupi.

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Skopje has many factories. The most important activities are the processing of metals, chemicals, textiles, printing and others.

Many notable companies based in Skopje include ArcelorMittal Skopje, Oil Rafinery, Alkaloid, Titan cement plant and Skovin Winery among others.

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Buenos Aires

Country: Argentina

Buenos Aires is the capital and largest city of Argentina, and the second-largest metropolitan area in South America, after Greater Sao Paulo.

It is located on the western shore of the estuary of the Rio de la Plata, on the southeastern coast of the South American continent.

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The economy in the city proper alone, measured by Gross Geographic Product (adjusted for purchasing power), totalled $84.7 billion ($34,200 per capita) in 2011 and amounts to nearly a quarter of Argentina's as a whole.

Metro Buenos Aires, according to one well-quoted study, constitutes the 13th-largest economy among the world's cities.

The Buenos Aires Human Development Index is likewise high by international standards.

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Montevideo

Country: Uruguay

Montevideo is the largest city, the capital, and the chief port of Uruguay. According to the census of 2004, Montevideo has a population of 1,325,968 (about half of Uruguay's population).

It has an area of 530 sq km and extends 20km from west to east.

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As the capital of Uruguay, Montevideo is the economic and political centre of the country. Most of the largest and wealthiest businesses in Uruguay have their headquarters in the city.

Since the 1990s the city has undergone rapid economic development and modernization, including two of Uruguay's most important buildings - the World Trade Center Montevideo (1998), and Telecommunications Tower (2000), the headquarters of Uruguay's government-owned telecommunications company Antel, increasing the city's integration into the global marketplace.

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Panama City

Country: Panama

Panama City is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Panama. It has a population of 880,691, with a total metro population of 1,272,672, and it is located at the Pacific entrance of the Panama Canal, in the province of Panama.

The city is the political and administrative centre of the country, and a hub for international banking and commerce.

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Being the economic and financial centre of the country, Panama City's economy is service-based, heavily weighted toward banking, commerce, and tourism.

The economy is dependent, to a significant extent, on trade and shipping activities, associated to the Panama Canal, and port facilities located in Balboa.

The city has benefited from significant economic growth in the latest years, mainly due to the ongoing expansion of the Panama Canal, an increase in real estate investment, and a relatively stable banking sector.

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Addis Ababa

Country: Ethiopia

The economic activities in Addis Ababa are diverse. According to official statistics from the federal government, some 119,197 people in the city are engaged in trade and commerce; 113,977 in manufacturing and industry; 80,391 homemakers of different variety; 71,186 in civil administration; 50,538 in transport and communication; 42,514 in education, health and social services; 32,685 in hotel and catering services; and 16,602 in agriculture.

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The city has recently been in a construction boom with tall buildings rising in many places. Various luxury services have also become available and the construction of shopping malls has recently increased.

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Beirut

Country: Lebanon

Beirut is the capital of Lebanon and its seat of government. The Lebanese parliament, all the ministries and most of the public administrations, embassies and consulates are there.

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Beirut was named the top place to visit by The New York Times in 2009, and as one of the 10 liveliest cities in the world by Lonely Planet in the same year.

In 2011 MasterCard Index revealed that Beirut had the second-highest visitor spending levels in the Middle East and Africa.