‘MG Rd is India’s No. 1 high street’

Bengaluru: In a study of high streets (shopping destinations) across eight cities in India, Bengaluru’s MG Road has emerged the best.What’s more, four of the top 10 high streets in the study are from Bengaluru. The other three are Commercial Street, Church Street and Brigade Road.Knight Frank, the real estate consultancy that conducted the survey, said it assessed shopping complexes based on the public transport available to the location, parking space available, and the visibility of stores in that area. During the exercise, the team undertook a field survey of 30 high streets and observed the activity around these streets, Divya Agarwal, vice-president of research at Knight Frank India said. The layouts and master planning of the high street define the visibility. Markets like Khan Market and DLF Galleria (in Delhi) scored very low on this parameter, whereas markets aligned along access roads like MG Road (Bengaluru), Somajiguda (Hyderabad), Colaba Causeway (Mumbai), Anna Nagar (Chennai), Park Street (Kolkata) and Camac Street (Kolkata) scored high. The agency observed that the high streets they surveyed catered equally to Indian and foreign nationals. Bengaluru’s high streets, the study said, have a high concentration of food and beverage destinations, with a number of breweries and drinking holes co-existing with local stores. “Due to its demographic spread comprising many Indian and foreign nationals, the proportion of non-modern retail remains limited to one-third of Bengaluru’s total high street stock spread across seven prominent high streets,” the report said. Bengaluru has the highest proportion (67%) of modern retail outlets that issue invoices. Chennai follows with 66% of the retail space in modern outlets. The National Capital Region and Kolkata have a higher percentage of informal stores than modern retail stores.
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