Time to look beyond technology

Just weeks after being elected as US president, Barack Obama held an interaction with school students. His message to them was clear: Beware of Bangalore. Bangalore is the new definition of ‘international level’, said Obama. “Young people in the US are going to be growing up in an international environment, where they’re competing not just against kids in Chicago or Los Angeles, but they’re competing against folks in Bangalore and Beijing.”

What made Obama say so? The answer is simple. If knowledge economy is India’s future, Bangalore leads the way.

‘Bangalore-d’ has become a verb in the US. Bangalore’s contributions to the world are going beyond IT into biotech, medicine, aerospace—anything requiring science and technology expertise for which distance and time zones are not barriers. Truly Bangalore is the new Silicon Valley.

To smart young techies—Nandan Nilekani, Kiran Mazumdar Shaw, Narayan Murthy and Azim Premji— are shining examples of the value of meritocracy, the transformational power of education and passion. But as a Bangalorean, it’s remarkable to see the city make a transition from being a pensioner’s paradise to a global science and technology hub.

Many old-time Bangaloreans like me still remember those times and wonder at the city that it is today, sometimes with regret, but also with awe.

Science and technology were always in Bangalore’s DNA. Long before the Indian economy was opened in the 1990s, the city witnessed a flow of overseas information technology companies in the 1980s. Later, this led to domestic IT start-ups, many of which are now among Fortune 500 companies.

Bangalore has had the best of science and technology institutions for many years—IISc, NAL, HAL, CAIR, BEL, BHEL—and a large number of engineering and medical colleges. The best scientists, technocrats, teachers and students from across India were attracted to Bangalore encouraged by the salubrious weather, peace loving people and cosmopolitan environment.

The basic ingredient of talent attraction was already there at Bangalore when the first MNC arrived in 1985—Texas Instruments. Despite many infrastructure bottlenecks like power, connectivity, etc they were able to attract highly educated and dedicated talent from all over India.

Soon almost every top company had Bangalore on its wish list. So, like Florence during the Renaissance and the Bay Area in the 1970s, Bangalore provided a liberal, cosmopolitan, welcoming environment coupled with a scientific temper—a true talent magnet.

Since then over 500 MNCs have come to Bangalore and the city has become a melting pot for talent from across the spectrum, not just IT. There is ITeS, biotech, automobile, aerospace—you name it.

Despite all the infrastructure issues, the increasing cost of talent and doing business, companies have continued to setup shops here.

While MNCs were coming here, city-based IT companies like Infosys and Wipro started acquiring export market in the 1980s with a focus on on-site services, especially for the US markets. Gradually, these companies moved up the value chain and began to offer off-shore and near-shore services.

These Indian companies are now among the most respected IT companies in global markets. Growth in these companies was boosted by the emergent Indian stock exchanges and later overseas ones. The new wealth was shared with the aspirant talent pool through schemes like ESOPs, which weren’t popular previously.

Now the confidence level is so high, that almost every quarter, we hear of Indian IT companies making new acquisitions in the international market. 

In the last decade, a new class of Indian tech companies have begun to emerge—entrepreneurial startups creating innovative products and services supported by: venture capital, simultaneous access to the latest information and technology globally, talent with world-class education and best-practices, experience and access to domestic and global markets via the Internet, human networks and investors.

Talent from the best of companies is a part of such startups. Like the Mittelschtand of Germany, I believe these companies may hold the future for the Indian technology industry in this century—and where Bangalore goes today, India will go tomorrow.

Imperceptibly though, Bangalore’s technology talent mix is changing, and will continue to change up the value chain, as affordability causes lower value tasks to move to other hubs in India and elsewhere in Asia. Bangalore is becoming a high-cost, high-value location for technology talent.

Supporting industries, which sell to the technology industry—construction, infrastructure, telecom, education, entertainment, retail have all grown, and their talent comes from everywhere as well.

As the wants and needs of the technology talent pool in Bangalore gets more sophisticated, highly qualified service providers are needed in supporting industries and there is considerable talent migration to Bangalore from other parts of India as well as overseas, especially in industries like retail and infrastructure where top indigenous talent was not available previously. These industries will continue to grow and move up the value chain as the tech industry grows and evolves in Bangalore.

So, Bangalore is reaching ‘critical mass’, as a self-sustaining ecosystem and a global talent magnet, but there are real social and structural dangers that need to be addressed soon.
Infrastructure—not just roads and buildings, but power and water, waste management, safety and security, public health, traffic management, corruption, cosmopolitan tolerance, green cover, civic amenities, equal education, women’s empowerment—all this affects the talent pool’s quality of life, and also the larger social fabric that made Bangalore what it is.

I am bullish that with the talent available here and given a healthy government-citizen partnership, we can overcome these challenges to put Bangalore on top of the world.