The making of Mumbai as a global city: investigating the role of the offshore services sector

This chapter investigates how the offshore services industry contributes to processes of global city making in India’s financial capital, Mumbai. It looks for synergies between the city’s offshore services sector and its onshore financial services sector, nursing the idea that the latter should be regarded as Mumbai’s main ‘global city maker’, and exploring the hypothesis that the offshore services sector contributes to global city making mainly by supporting the functioning of the city’s onshore finance sector. The chapter shows that while operational interactions between Mumbai’s offshore and onshore financial services sectors are limited and while the offshore services activities themselves do not accumulate commanding powers in global production networks, it is through human capital formation, auxiliary services upgrading, financial services demand creation, and reputation-building that the offshore services industry fosters the city’s onshore finance sector and thus indirectly, yet meaningfully, contributes to the making of Mumbai as a global city.