Mumbai has emerged as the world’s cheapest city to live and work in, among 12 top metropolitan cities of the world. London, Hong Kong and New York are the world’s most expensive cities for companies to accommodate employees, with costs in London going through the roof, says Savills World Research. The cheapest city in the index is Mumbai, where it costs just $29,088 to accommodate an employee, up only 2.4% since 2008, while Shanghai comes in at $38,089, up 15.6%.

On comparison, the index which measures the combined cost of residential and office rental per person per year found that London’s costs averaged $118,425 in the first half of 2015, an increase of 20.7% since the index was launched in 2008. This is marginally more expensive than Hong Kong where costs have risen just 0.4 per cent since 2008, and New York which has seen 28.4% growth. San Francisco has been the biggest riser, with growth of 59.8% since 2008.

The average cost per head across the 12 leading world cities in the Savills study is $74,945 per year, which is 1.4 times the average city GDP per head of population. Three cities – Tokyo, Dubai and Singapore have all seen live/work costs fall between minus 8% and minus 16.6% over the period since 2008.