Bangalore reinvents itself as Asian gateway

Bangalore reinvents itself as Asian gateway

Narayanan Madhavan
New Delhi





BANGALORE IS changing. Two years ago, the city that had too much of a good thing with its software boom was in fear of being "Bangalored" itself by the emergence of low-cost techie centres in places ranging from Mohali and Trivandrum.

Now, choking with salary hikes, competition and traffic jams and a strong rupee that has eroded IT competitiveness, the city is busy reinventing itself for a new, new world.

On the menu now are a finishing school for techies, high-way like roads and plug-and-play offices. M.N. Vidyashankar, Karnataka's secretary for IT and BT (information technology and biotechnology), told Hindustan Times on Monday that the new urge will reflect in the BangaloreIT.com international conference and event due to be held from October 29 to November 1. "We are branding the event as a gateway to Asia," Vidyashankar said. "It is not about cost advantage. It is about intellectual advantage."

Bangalore has changed fast from being a town for cut-rate Java programmers (who still exist in hordes) to one that produces advanced work including software product development, semi-conductor design and materials research, over the years. Now, in a Silicon Valley-like mode, Bangalore's authorities are in a mood to help startups.

J. Parthasarathy, director of the Software Technology Parks of India (STPI), the government agency which has for long exist ed to register IT companies and provide an earth station, now offers "incubation facilities" for early-stage companies.

For Rs. 5,000 a month, entrepreneurs can rent an office seat including an Internet-linked workstation and consultants would be around to help them go through formalities like legal registration.

Bangalore has about 1,900 software units that exported Rs. 52,000 crore-worth of services in 2006/07 – about 35 per cent of the country's total exports from software and services like business process outsourcing.

To address a long-held complaint that Bangalore's techies only know to write code and not solve business problems or interact with customers, the state has allotted 35 acres of land to the Dale Carnegie Institute at Ra mangaram (the suburban village where Sholay was shot in the 1970s). The Rs 77-crore investment project is expected to turn out 25,000 people per year with training in business orientation.

On the infrastructure side, Bangalore is betting on the timely completion of the Bangalore International Airport by April 2008. The project is ahead of schedule, and will be linked by a 22 km-long eight-lane road contracts for which are expected to be awarded by the end of this month.

An elevated highway on the Hosur road that connects Bangalore with Electronic City where compa , nies like Infosys, Wipro and Siemens have their campuses, is expected to be completed by August 2008. Work is on to build metro railway in 19 different locations.