Mumbai's purpose-built financial district, conceived in the 1970s as a solution to the congestion of the Fort area and built out through the 1990s and 2000s into the city's primary address for international banks, corporate headquarters, and foreign consulates. The American and British consulates are here, as are the offices of most major Indian conglomerates and financial institutions, in a grid of broad roads — a relative rarity in Mumbai — lined with towers of varying architectural ambition.
BKC (as it is universally called) is not a neighbourhood in the traditional sense — there are few residents and little street life during evenings and weekends — but it is the clearest expression of what Mumbai's planners imagined the modern city could be. The Nita Mukesh Ambani Cultural Centre, opened in 2023, is the most significant new arts venue in the city in decades, with gallery space, a performing arts hall, and a museum of Indian art built at Reliance-scale. The adjacent Jio World Drive mall represents the upscale retail and restaurant market that has developed around the corporate district.