A city can look very different when seen through the experience of living somewhere else. For Chennai-based Sai Ganesh, nearly three years in Bengaluru changed the way he looks at his hometown and its growth.
He described the experience by saying that “Bengaluru gave me the lens to see Chennai differently. He also hosts international guests through his Airbnb properties. He pointed to apartments coming up alongside farmland and industrial corridors developing alongside residential communities.
He said he came back to the city nearly three months ago and that his time in Bengaluru gave him a new perspective on Chennai. Ganesh said he is now living on the outskirts of Chennai, working out of a mango farmland, while building his real estate practice across developing corridors. He said that living there has made him notice changes that he may not have noticed earlier, adding that Chennai’s outskirts no longer feel like outskirts. He said highways, logistics, manufacturing, ports, IT, healthcare, education and housing are gradually connecting into one larger economic ecosystem.
He pointed to manufacturing, logistics, ports, automobiles, EVs, electronics, aerospace, IT, residential development and agriculture as sectors contributing to the region’s growth. He described Bengaluru as the place that gave him the perspective and Chennai as the place giving him the canvas. Instead of looking only at where Chennai stands today, Ganesh said he is increasingly interested in imagining how the wider region could look over the next 15 to 20 years. He said he is now less interested in asking where Chennai is today and more interested in what the entire region could look like 15 to 20 years from now.
Reflecting on his time in Bengaluru, Ganesh said the city helped him understand the impact of a technology-led economy on an urban region. He said Bengaluru showed him the power of such an economy through talent, startups, migration, offices and housing demand, which can transform an entire city. However, Ganesh said Chennai has a different strength that interests him, which is diversification. Ganesh said returning to Chennai has given him a new perspective on the city and its surrounding areas. He concluded by saying that he is looking forward to building, learning and observing the transformation of Chennai and its surrounding region “from the ground.”
