Bangalore - "Technopolis" of India
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A large part of India's success in the software sector is due to the crucial role played by the State of Karnataka in promoting and providing a boost to IT. Karnataka has emerged as the computer capital and center of high-tech industries, especially software. Bangalore has for long been known as India's answer to Silicon Valley, and this is the city where most large software companies have set up shop and operate out of state-of-the-art facilities. This is the reason it is fast becoming the "Technopolis" of India. The Government of Karnataka has also been extremely positive about the software and services marketplace and has helped create the relevant telecom and policy infrastructure conducive to the growth of this sector. The dynamic industrial policy declared in 1996, with comprehensive packages of incentives and concessions, has ensured a productive ground for various industries. The hardware and software industries have now brought about a revolution of sorts under these schemes. Various institutions and computer training centers have contributed to the large number of trained and talented professionals.

The City of Bangalore has positioned itself to help market the software industry. This is also why Bangalore has been playing host to international-class conferences, workshops and exhibitions devoted to the software cause. The city 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, in fact, home to GE's biggest R&D Center outside the U.S.-the Jack Welch Technology Center, which hires over 200 PhDs/scientists every month! To top it all, Bangalore has just been ranked the fourth best "Global hub of technological innovation" by none other than the United Nations.

Bangalore's strengths in the software market also lie in its pursuit of new opportunities. In fact, two key segments that are expected to open up over the next few years for India are e-commerce and remote processing. Opportunities in e-commerce software solutions are emerging as a major area of growth in the Indian IT software and services industry. A recent study undertaken by The Boston Consulting Group for NASSCOM clearly stated that India can earn revenues of US$9 billion from e-business solutions by 2005.

IT-Enabled Services, or "Remote Processing", has emerged as the next major driver of the technology services industry. With competitive telecommunication costs, well developed infrastructure and a huge pool of English-speaking and computer-literate graduate manpower, India rates higher than many other countries as a hub for IT-enabled services. Call centers and business process outsourcing is emerging as the next wave of growth in India. The McKinsey study indicated that India will earn $18 billion in revenues through these services and create additional employment of one million jobs. Already companies like GE Caps, British Airways, Swissair, American Express and British Telecom are using Indian companies for these services. The IT-Enabled Services segment currently employs around 70,000 people and accounts for 10.6 percent of the total IT software and services industry revenues.

Bangalore is home to numerous success stories. Bangalore already has more than 1000 software companies and the number is still growing. In the year 2001 Bangalore saw a cumulative investment of around US $1.3 billion in the software industry. About 146 new software industries during 2001 and about 110 during 2002 have been established and the total number of software professionals is over 80,000. During 2002-03 about 116 new Software Technology Park Units were established. The IT industry's composition in Bangalore (2002) shown in the diagram below indicates that a large percentage of the companies is involved in high technology software development. (Source: www.bangaloreit.com)

Bangalore is a melting pot of different people, cultures, and languages. It is the only city in India in which you will hear Kannada spoken as much as Tamil or Telugu or Hindi. Because of its cosmopolitan nature, Bangalore attracts people from all over India and is among the fastest growing cities in Asia.

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