VR Bengaluru

The story of VR Bengaluru

VR Bengaluru is a mixed-use retail development in Whitefield, Bangalore, and the most striking thing about it is that it is not only a shopping center but a compound that also includes a hotel, a multiplex, commercial spaces, and customisable collaborative working spaces for start-ups and entrepreneurs.

The centre has a gross floor area of 600,000 square feet (56,000 m2). Inside it are The Hive, a co-working space; The Waverly, the hotel and residences; and the SkyDeck, an activated rooftop with a temperature-controlled pool, a jogging track and an open-air LED screen. South India’s first H&M store was launched here in 2016. It is owned, developed and operated by Virtuous Retail South Asia Pte Ltd.

This is a place built for mixed use rather than a single purpose, so you can read it as retail, work, stay and leisure in one complex. If you are looking for the parts a visitor can actually spot, the rooftop SkyDeck is the most distinctive named feature in the description, and the multiplex is noted for having the largest Gold Class in India along with an IMAX.

VR Bengaluru also sits within Phoenix Marketcity (Bengaluru), which is the larger site named around it. That makes this complex part of a bigger retail setting in Whitefield, with one development standing inside another.

If you’re moving through the place, the useful landmarks to notice are the named components themselves: The Hive, The Waverly and the SkyDeck. Those names tell you how the development is organised, and they are the best guide to what you are actually standing in front of here, rather than treating it as a single mall front.

The wider Bengaluru heritage record around this part of the city also shows how fast urban change and public preservation efforts coexist here. A related conservation project in the city is focused on protecting ancient stone inscriptions through documentation, digital preservation and public awareness, showing one of the other ways the city’s built environment is being managed today. In the same urban landscape, the mix of new commercial development and active preservation is very visible.

So what you have here is a contemporary retail and lifestyle complex in Whitefield, one that combines shopping, work, hotel and rooftop leisure in a single address. If you want a practical way to take it in, start by locating The Hive and The Waverly, then look up toward the SkyDeck, because that rooftop is the clearest sign of how the whole place is put together.