Talent pool makes firms log onto city

Talent pool makes firms log onto city
The Times of India

Bangalore: The city’s exponential growth has mostly been fuelled by the IT juggernaut. And that shows no sign of slowing down, despite all talk of the city’s crumbling infrastructure. About 206 IT companies received approvals to start operations in Bangalore during the last fiscal. This translates to nearly four companies every week.

What is still driving companies to choose Bangalore?
The answer is unanimous: Access to world-class talent!

Companies that spoke to The Times of India recognise that secondary cities like Mysore and Mangalore are good alternatives. However, the message is that these secondary cities will have to wait a little longer because Bangalore is still the “Mecca of software professionals”.

“It is the access to talent as well as the proximity to companies within our ecosystem that made us choose Bangalore,” says Ravi Amble, CEO of Televital, a telemedicine and e-health technology solutions firm which announced plans on Wednesday to invest $10 million in Bangalore.

Wyse, a company working on thin-client technology, has just shut its development centre in the US and opened one in Bangalore. It has hired 122 engineers for its Bangalore centre and plans to double this within the next 12 months.

Says Wyse president Nav Bhullar: “We are located in Whitefield and I travel on the (narrow, congested) bridge that leads to Whitefield every day. I am sure these (infrastructure) are problems that will eventually be solved. But the most important reason for choosing Bangalore is that it has the single largest concentration of software engineers in the world.”

For the financial year ending March 31, 2004, the total software exports from Bangalore was Rs 26,724 crore, accounting for about 96% of Karnataka’s exports in the year.

Secondary cities are slowly beginning to contribute to the state’s overall IT growth. The total software exports from Mysore saw a 72% increase to touch Rs 309 crore while Mangalore/Manipal grew by 25% to touch Rs 567 crore.

Other segments of industry too are singing the same tune when it comes to choosing Bangalore. “You attract talent typically through networking. And since you have a number of apparel brands and other retailers based in Bangalore, reference talent in retail is easier to get here,” says K. Vaitheeswaran, COO of Fabmall.com.