is your city worth it?

For context, three weeks ago, my friend Prateek called me from Indore.

"Best decision I ever made," he said. I could hear peacocks in the background.

Prateek spent 12 years in Bangalore building his startup.
Series A funding. Great team.
The whole package.

Then he left it all for a tier-2 city. Most were confused..

"I was spending 3 hours daily in traffic just to breathe air that was killing me," he told me. "₹45,000 rent for a 2BHK where I couldn't see stars at night. What's the point?"

I thought he was having a midlife crisis.

Then I saw the numbers.

68 million Indians returned to villages and smaller cities between 2018-2024.
That's larger than the entire population of the UK.

This isn't about COVID anymore.
This is something bigger.

Bangalore taught me something interesting about urban development.

You can have the best jobs, the most startup funding, the highest salaries. But if your city can't provide clean air and drinkable water, people will eventually leave.

The data is striking. Bangalore residents now lose over 2 years of life expectancy due to air pollution, with PM2.5 levels nearly doubling in 25 years. Delhi-NCR is worse, stealing 8.2 years from residents' lives.

Think about that. Delhi leads the world in life expectancy loss from air pollution.

And these numbers scare me: (esp cause I live in Delhi)

13 of the world's top 20 most polluted cities are now in India.

Delhi records PM2.5 levels of 91.6 µg/m³. That's 18 times higher than what's safe.

But here's what really hit me. In those same tier-2 cities everyone used to mock, internet speeds jumped 2,432% since 2014. From 4.18 Mbps to 105.85 Mbps.

Remote work became viable everywhere.

Suddenly, you didn't need to sacrifice your lungs for a paycheck.

My conversation with Prateek kept bothering me.

He mentioned something he called the "happiness tax."

The price you pay in metros just to access basic quality of life.

So I looked into what people were actually spending.

A 1BHK in Bangalore: ₹18,000-35,000 monthly.

In Indore: ₹10,000-15,000. That's 60% savings right there.

But the real cost isn't rent. It's time.

Bangalore commuters spend 63 minutes traveling just 15 km.

That's 470 hours annually.
Nearly 20 full days every year sitting in traffic.

Mumbai is worse.

Some suburb commuters face 8 hours daily during extreme congestion.

I started calculating.

If you're losing 470 hours to commuting and paying ₹35,000 monthly rent, you're spending ₹4.2 lakh annually plus 20 days of your life just to live in a city that's literally killing you.

If you're thinking about salaries in tier 2…

Yes. Average salaries in tier-2 cities are 30-40% lower than metros. But after cost adjustments, the real purchasing power is 59.99% higher than Mumbai.

You're actually richer in Indore making ₹8 lakh than in Mumbai making ₹12 lakh.

While everyone else was talking about tier-2 migration as a COVID trend, Karnataka's government was already betting on it becoming permanent.

Their Beyond Bengaluru policy launched in November 2024 with aggressive incentives: ₹50,000 per employee for companies moving tech workforce to tier-2 cities.

50% rent reimbursement for three years.

100% electricity duty exemption for five years.

They're paying companies to move.

Target: shift 150,000 tech jobs out of Bangalore over five years.

That's 10% of the city's entire IT workforce.

The results?

45% of India's startups now originate from tier-2/3 cities, up from 35% in 2023.

It's a fundamental restructuring of where Indians build their careers.

Here's what surprised me most.

During COVID lockdown, 44.13 million people moved from urban to rural areas.

Everyone called it panic. Temporary dislocation.

Then the data came in for 2024-2025.

Overall migration rates dropped to 28.9% of the population.

TLDR: it changed direction. 

Instead of everyone moving to Mumbai, Bangalore, and Delhi, people started targeting Pune, Jaipur, Coimbatore, Indore.

The Economic Advisory Council's December 2024 report analyzed over 1 billion railway booking records.

They found 75%+ of migration flows now stay within 500 km of origin.

People aren't leaving for distant metros anymore.

They're moving to nearby cities with better infrastructure.

And the infrastructure is there now. 

95.15% of India's villages have 3G/4G connectivity. The BharatNet project connected 214,283 gram panchayats with fiber optic cables.

This is what made the difference.

Not just roads and buildings, but digital infrastructure that makes remote work actually work.

What the Numbers Really Show

I spent a week digging through the employment data.

Tier-2 cities saw 42% rise in job openings while metros showed only 19% between September 2024 and February 2025.

IT sector jobs in tier-2 cities grew 17%. Production and manufacturing jobs grew 29%. Healthcare grew 29%.

But here's the pattern that matters: 88.63% of junior-level IT hiring now happens in tier-2 cities.

Companies are hiring fresh talent directly in smaller cities.

Zoho employs 2,000 people across 30 spoke offices in tier-2/3 cities.
IBM opened its fifth lab in Ahmedabad.
Happiest Minds is expanding to Bhubaneswar, Madurai, Coimbatore.

Global Capability Centers in tier-2 locations now employ 82,000 people, with one in five GCCs established in these cities in H1 2023.

The corporate money is following the talent migration.

I asked Prateek the obvious question: "What do you actually miss about Bangalore?"

He paused. "The startup ecosystem. If I need to pivot or my company fails, my options are limited here."

That's the real tradeoff.

Career growth limitations remain the most cited drawback of tier-2 cities.

Job diversity is lower.
Fewer networking events.
Limited access to experienced mentors.

And worse healthcare infra. Slower delivery times from ecomm. 

Plus, for entrepreneurs, funding is brutal. 

Only 13% of total startup funding flowed to tier-2 cities in 2022.

VCs and angel networks still concentrate in metros.

If you're building a company that needs multiple funding rounds, tier-2 cities make it harder.

But if you're a senior professional with established skills working remotely, or running a profitable bootstrapped business, the math completely flips.

You're trading networking density for 470 hours annually, ₹4.2 lakh in rent, and 8.2 years of life expectancy.

That's the actual calculation.

The Indian government is betting ₹3 lakh crore on tier-2/3 infrastructure.

The Smart Cities Mission completed 7,188 projects by March 2025. AMRUT 2.0 is building water connections for 10.5 crore people.

India's urban population will hit 590 million by 2030. That's 40% of the total population.

But unlike the last 50 years where everyone moved to the same five cities, this growth is spreading across 68 cities with populations over 1 million.

The question is whether you're early enough to benefit from the arbitrage.

Prateek bought a 3BHK apartment in Indore for ₹65 lakh.

Comparable property in Bangalore: ₹2.8 crore. 

Tier-2 cities are showing 17.6% average capital appreciation vs Delhi's 11.1%.

Three years from now, the arbitrage will be smaller.

The best tier-2 cities will cost more.

Remote work will be normalized everywhere.

Right now, you can still trade a Bangalore salary for an Indore cost of living.

That window won't stay open forever.

Hit reply and tell me: Are you considering leaving your metro? What's holding you back?

I read every email.

Until next week,
Ritesh