How Bangalore is Outpacing Silicon Valley - Tech Nomad in India

Foreigner, how do you feel? This is the coromangara district in

bangalore

and this is essentially where the

tech

boom started. If you know anything about the star world, have read anything in the last three decades, then you must have heard about this place, Bangalore and this one. It is the only time I will say that it is a name inherited from the British occupation in India, but the real name for the Indians of this city is Bangalore and this place is the beginning refuge of India. It has a reputation that few other places have. the world can even come close to matching and for years I have been baffled by bengaloo.

Now I'm finally here. I can totally see how you would house your office here, man, that's right, this is nice, it makes me like uh, Costa Rica beach. Below Vibes Believe it or not, the city of contrast is a city where a promising future meets this challenging precedent, just take a look around you and you will see a city that has experienced tremendous growth. People come here from all over India in search of a better future. 13 million people live here, half of them are migrants and traffic is just one of the many challenges that makes Bengaluru as a metropolis what it is, but the city has still flourished.

He wouldn't have survived if we had done this like the first day. because as of now I understand some of the rules of the road or non-rules of the road, but I'm not sure I want to do it again. Thousands of startups have come up in the last few years, all aiming to disrupt

tech

nology here and on a global scale, so with all the changes Bengaluru is facing, that still isn't stopping them and being here taught me that this is a lot More than just a beginning, in fact, Bengaluru is essential to India, it is essential to its people and here is why this is declining. planet bengalouge The history of Indian technology goes back at least five to six decades.

I don't think anyone expected what really happened in the last seven eight years. It has been a tremendous journey when Infosys started in 1981. It was in a socialist era when India was not really. so business friendly and this is where everything here in the 90's and it kind of exploded from here, a lot of people from all over India started moving here. Big brands started coming here and this was essentially the first big startup hub in the city neighborhood. Mangala is located in Southeast Bengal, it is one of the largest neighborhoods and a hotspot for commerce and residences.

It has seen tremendous growth since the 90s, especially thanks to technology. Bill, Koramangala and Bengaluru were not always like this, in fact this bustling city was. Once this quiet retirement town during the British colony back then, less than a million people lived here, retirees and farmers shared this place thanks to the excellent climate, lakes and lush green fields and it was not until after the independence of India in 47 which began Bengaluru. its rise to this world technological public edition as a new and young independent nation that India needed to develop its army and its Air Force and then the government of India made this huge investment in Bengaluru to help achieve this goal, so The army generally brings money to cities and with the military, companies like Congestion Aviation Limited and others emerged and needed people to work, very similar to what happened in Silicon Valley in the 50s with the military boom that exploded a little later in the 1950s. 70s and 80s and people stabilized. jobs, engineering, manufacturing and research and the Bengaluru we know today was largely transformed into this in the 90s, India took all these drastic measures, these measures to shift its economic identity towards markets and services and then two companies were instrumental for this group. the two companies that started it all in Bangalore, the entire IT services boom happened with these companies.

Infosys is such a key part of India's history that it is one of the largest IT companies that migrated to Bengaluru in '83 and in '93 went public and created hundreds of jobs in this city in 1981 with a initial capital of 250.7 engineers set up the business which ushered in the private technology industry in India and then Wipro on the other hand was this veteran in Bengaluru, it has been around since 45, but the company used to like oils vegetables, but they saw the future and then converted, they migrated to this IT company in the 70s and 80s and then at 82 they were completely focused on computers and in 2004 it was the second Indian company to make a billion dollars in Income and these companies set the standard, they set a new standard for us in Bengaluru and they had a direct impact on regions like because of course people wanted these jobs so the masses flocked to Bengaluru in search of better and more opportunities, so the city saw this flock.

This growth, like few other cities in India or the world, becoming a computer engineer and getting a job at Infosys or Wipro was the right thing to do in the late 1990s and 2000s. Anglo became a valid destination to pursue a career. in technology with its own people. I wanted to be here, it is actually just five miles or eight kilometers from Electronic City, which is another key part of Bengaluru, but Vipro's emphasis and impact went beyond migration. These companies were vital in boosting the startup scene in Bengaluru in a very similar way to how early Silicon Valley companies helped shape it for the future, for example, they had a culture of entrepreneurship instilled in their core from the beginning, the founders wanted to create this environment where people worked and also learned about business, this knowledge inevitably led to employees leaving and then creating their own companies, take shroud Hedge for example, joined emphasis in 83, worked there until 2002 and learned so much that he left the company to mentor other startups, then founded his own company that makes millions of dollars a year and Of course, that's not the only example, but more former employees left the company to create Lesions Web Solutions in 2006, a social platform that helps businesses mine data.

Examples like these are almost endless, after all, the emphasis was on the first job of many of these people and what they learned there helped them create their new companies. A vital element of this growth is that the emphasis gave employees stock options which gave them stability, gave them wealth and the confidence to try new things if they can get in at the relatively early stage the company is at. I'm not going to be able to pay you as much as a Google or a drink, but he still has deep enough pockets that you can get by on a good amount of salary, maybe as your ux guy, like three thousand or five thousand dollars a month . me Pro is no different, its first CEO created a huge media company, two other ex-Repro founded another internet company in the early 2000s and then there is Mind Tree, this huge technology company was created by six ex-employees of weepro and now has 36,000 employees generating 1.3 billion in revenue annually.

Hundreds of startups emerged from these two companies and grew to almost unlimited potential, so Bengaluru and India not only benefited from the companies that were born here. Bengaluru has also become so powerful that it has even attracted the attention of global giants. It is a very interesting area, there are many bars, there are many restaurants and all that happens. I can see why a company would want to have their office here. The meeting we did was actually around this area. said oh Amazon will be the Amazon of India, it's not Flipkart anymore, but you wonder if that raid competed with Amazon and sold to Walmart, right?

And the seniors, not just the founders, the whole senior team, the core team. United States, this brings us back to migration and why people move here. One of the reasons is its proximity to the e-city and in many ways the e-city is like the nervous system of India, it has 800 acres packed with more than 200 IT companies and this area. Electronic City dates back to '78, and back then Archie Baliga, an engineer and professor, wanted to create this center, this place that would rival Silicon Valley. He began to create what would become the world's leading outsourcing center so you can see how all of these factors pile up on top of each other to essentially create a core like core of talent that inevitably eventually drives growth and today they are reaping the benefits.

Electronic city lights on Hosur road which is a vital highway for Bangalore so it was there and with Carmen Gala so close by, this road also became essential for the city. HSR is one of the major startup hubs in the city, it is located between the main hub towards the north and the electronic city in the south, which is an older I.T Hub that has been around for a while and getting around Bengaluru is not particularly easy, traffic is a bit messy so this HSR location is quite ideal, which is why many companies are choosing to move here now with all this growth as usual.

It comes at a cost - so many people have moved to Bengaluru that the city has obviously struggled to keep up with this demand as any city would and traffic is one of the most obvious places where you can see that some suggest it is one of The worst city traffic in the world, let's try to rent one of these scooters, see if we can get the yellow app, this is great, they have scooters here, faster, do we all want coffee? Oh, this is great, okay, yeah, what's up, how do you do it? I feel that the demand for residential housing in the city increased by 55 from 2018 to 2022.

There is also significant absorption in that market, from 2010 to 2020, rent increased by approximately 50 percent. A one-bedroom apartment within Bengaluru has increased from around 9,500 in 2010 to around 17,000 rupees in 2021. Some salaries are so high that they compare with San Francisco salaries that, by the way, the income is reserved for the technology employees. By the way, this is the founder of Olas, Babish, Agarwal Ola, he started in 2011 and is the largest in India. Ride-sharing platform with around 60 in the market despite all the challenges despite the chaos, the makeshift infrastructure Bengaluru is unstoppable. Get this if you want to study computer science.

There are about 100 institutions here that offer that degree. Bengaluru produces thousands of new engineers every year. The city lives and breathes technology and can be seen from 2015 to 2021. Bengaluru surpassed San Francisco in start-ups in just two years, from 19 to 21, the city saw the birth of around 5000 startups and that does not It's an easy feat that people want. Whether you are here from the rest of India or the rest of the world, there is everything you need to be in one of the most exciting startups on the planet on a global scale. Bengaluru is

outpacing

any other tech hub with over $18.6 billion in investments last year. that's more than Beijing, that's more than Shanghai and all that money is going to these startups.

Anyone here walking next to you is probably involved in startups. Bengaluru is a haven for startups and as much as possible is an essential part of India in the country. There are around 5 million people working in it and BPM sectors in Bengaluru alone, the companies employ 1.5 million people, i.e. 30 percent of India's IT workforce, which is concentrated in this city and that is not all. Bengaluru accounts for 40 per cent of India's Silicon Valley in Bengaluru. It is called the Silicon Valley of India so yes of course it is not unusual for meat lovers to have the idea that this city of Bengaluru could be the next Silicon Valley and of course it makes sense to make that comparison To answer the question you asked, I have to look at how they are similar and how they are different.

What does Silicon Valley mean? First of all, Silicon Valley is about history. It is the birthplace of technology. It is a birthplace that has changed the entire world through everything we do. So yes. Silicon Valley has an incomparable and unprecedented advantage, but Bengaloo is catching up, it is catching up in a scorching place of that company that revolutionizes technology on a global scale, others will come, others may come, but this is the other side of the world, the ecosystem in Bengaluru certainly. has the potential to soon transform India, the most populous country in the world, there is a company called Flipkart that is basically the Amazon of India, the first startup that came to Piggly and so much so that Amazon realized that it is . an opportunity and we have to enter India.

I think it's a company that redefines itself as if Infosys started all the service identification services, uh, all this, you know what's up with the revolution? The startup Revolution for me was aFlipkart. A city like Bangalore can transform a country like India, so can India lead the transformation of its region? Can they stop the transformation of cities and societies that startups in developed countries often overlook? Judging from what I saw, most of the elements are already here and I'm very excited about what's to come.