From pensioner’s paradise to IT hub, the city of Bangalore’s growth has been unprecedented over the last few years. With many international companies and MNCs headquartered in Bangalore, there is no doubt that when it comes to information techonology and software services, this is the place to be right now!

The Silicon Valley of India is a nickname that was given to the city of Bangalore to recognise its status as a hub for information technology (IT) companies and is a comparative reference to the original Silicon Valley, based around Santa Clara Valley, California, USA.

With many large software companies headquartered out of state-of-the-art facilities Bangalore, including the two Indian biggies, Infosys and Wipro, the city has well established itself now as India’s answer to Silicon Valley. The Government of Karnataka has also been positive about the software and services marketplace and has helped create the relevant telecom and policy infrastructure conducive to the growth of this sector. Bangalore has also been playing host to international-class conferences, workshops and exhibitions in this domain.

A few facts: Bangalore apparently has the highest number of engineering colleges in the world. Almost 50 percent of the world’s SEI CMM Level 5 companies, COPC/ISO recognized Customer Interaction Centers, and over 103 R&D institutions. It is known as an R&D hub today and I also read recently that it files a record number of patents every month! And as feather in its cap, it was ranked the fourth best “Global hub of technological innovation” by none other than the United Nations.

Bangalore reputation came due to the fact that the city has a concentration of software technology related activity, similar to that of the Silicon Valley in California. In fact, the number of people employed in this field is said to have surpassed the Silicon Valley, in sheer numbers.

Companies like Texas Instruments, Siemens, Synopsis, Philips, and National Semiconductors in Integrated Chip Designing, Lucent Technologies, Nortel, Siemens, Motorola, Cisco Systems, Ericsson & Sony, Oracle, Novell, Sun Microsystems, Digital, Apple, Microsoft, etc all have a presence in Bangalore and are either already well established or are in the process of expansion.

Many of these companies today have a presence in Electronics City, which is said to have been the brainchild of R. K. Baliga, the first Chairman and Managing Director Karnataka State Electronics Development Corporation, a government owned agency aimed at expanding the electronics industry in the state of Karnataka established in 1976.

Baliga proposed the concept of developing the electronic city in the 1970s. “The agency purchased 335 acres of land 18 km south of Bangalore for its Electronics City project, which was meant to establish an industrial park in Bangalore. Notwithstanding complaints by the industrial park’s tenants on the condition of the roads, power and water availability, KEONICS claimed initially that the title of Silicon Valley of India belonged to the city’s Electronics City campus[2]. As part of its promotion of this concept, KEONICS distributed reprints of an article entitled Can Bangalore become India’s Silicon Valley” that first appeared in “Plus: The Total Computer Magazine”.” (Source: Wikipedia)

QUICK FACTS
– The district of Bangalore includes Anekal, Bangalore North, Bangalore South and Bangalore City
– Home to more than 6 million people, and a base for 10,000 industries
– India’s fifth largest city and the fastest growing city in Asia
– Half way between the coasts of Southern India. Latitude: 12 8′ North, Longitude: 77 37′ East
– Altitude: 3000 feet above sea level. Area: 368 square kilometres
– Population: 60 Lakhs
– Language: Kannada, Hindi and English
– Literacy: 75.42%
– Green Cover: 40%

Credit: Credit: A day in the life of India’s Silicon Valley

Read:
– Bigger than Silicon Valley?