Bangalore IT event loses online identity

Bangalore IT event loses online identity
Bibhu Ranjan Mishra & Praveen Bose / Bangalore November 11, 2008, 0:03 IST

It figures among the most prestigious annual IT events in India. However, BangaloreIT — which was instrumental in launching the Silicon Valley of India on the global map over the last decade — has lost its .in and .com online identities to cyber squatters. Moreover, the government's IT department has not made any serious effort to regain the .in URL.

This is one reason why the 11th edition of the premier IT event has now been renamed as BangaloreIT.biz, though the state government insists the change in the name of the event was done keeping in mind the changing needs of the industry. The fact remains, though, that cyber squatters were responsible for the so-called IT savvy state changing the name of the event twice. BangaloreIT.com went through various avatars — starting as Bangalore IT.com in 1998 (the .com identity was taken by cyber squatters in 2006), to BangaloreIT.in in the middle and then to Bangalore IT.biz this year.

"BangaloreIT.in should have been regained by evicting the cyber-squatter easily, as .in is given by the department of IT of the government of India. But no serious effort seems to have been made towards regaining it from the cyber squatter," said a high-ranking industry source involved with the event for the last 10 years.

On being asked why the state IT department failed to protect the two names which had earned enough brand equity due to the vigorous efforts of the organisers in the early days, Ashok Kumar C Manoli, principal secretary to department of IT, government of Karnataka, did not respond to the specific question. All he said was: "Change is the law of nature, and there is nothing wrong in creating another brand which has been done with a scientific bent of mind, at a time when the industry buckled under the pressure of a global financial slowdown is busy keeping their business going."

Bangalore IT.com started in the year 1998 when JH Patel was the chief minister of Karnataka. The first event that was organised in ITPL on the outskirts of the city saw eminent personalities including late Dewang Mehta, the then Nasscom president, NR Narayana Murthy, founder-chairman of Infosys and the then IT secretary Sanjoy Dasgupta. The first four to five IT events also saw people from the industry on the dais as compared to politicians in 2008.

However, this year, even the offline event appears to have lost its shine. Narayana Murthy, who is in the state's IT task force, did not participate in Bangalore IT.biz this year. The inaugural function saw political rhetoric from the likes of Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi, BJP MP from Karnataka Ananthkumar, state IT Minister Katta Subramanya Naidu and even Chief Minister BS Yeddyurappa himself. No representatives from the small- and medium-IT firms, which the state government is now promoting to attract them to the tier-II, tier-III towns, were invited to the dais.

Around 94 companies participated in this year's IT event from November 6-8. However, many of them were from real estate firms and from other industries like power, battery with no direct role to play in the event. Said a participant who had taken little over 15 sq m of exhibition space in BangaloreIT.biz this year: "We paid about Rs 2 lakh to get a space here. But an event of this stature no longer makes any sense for us to come every year and spend so much money. In fact, things were different when SM Krishna was the chief minister of Karnataka. We were getting much more visibility during those days."

Besides, unlike the previous years when for every subject there used to be a dedicated pavilion, the exhibition space this year has shrunk considerably in size with just one long hall where all the exhibitors were made to put up their stalls.

"We had invited Narayana Murthy to the inaugural function. But he could not make it since he was outside the country. Besides, we had offered a different platform for the SMEs and start-ups called Young Entrepreneurs' Start ups in Soaring Spirit' (YESSS) in the event," said Manoli.