Economy of Bangalore

Bangalore evolved into a manufacturing hub for heavy industries such as Hindustan Aeronautics Limited, Indian Telephone Industries (ITI), Hindustan Machine Tools and Bharat Electronics Limited (BEL) after India gained independence from Great Britain in 1947. Within the last decade, the establishment and success of high technology firms in Bangalore has led to the growth of Information Technology (IT) in India. IT firms in Bangalore employ about 35% of India's pool of 10 lakh (1 million) IT professionals. Bangalore accounts for the highest IT-related exports in the country.

The city's income gross domestic product in 2004-05 was valued at INR 433.8 billion. [ [http://des.kar.nic.in/mainpage.asp?option=5 ] ]

One of the important factors spurring Bangalore's growth was heavy central government investment in Bangalore's public sector industries, partially due to the fact that it is geographically out-of-reach from India's rivals Pakistan and China. This led to the concentration of technical and scientific navigator in Bangalore, and is a factor in leading the "IT revolution" in Bangalore. Karnataka's political leaders such as D. Devaraj Urs, Ramakrishna Hegde, Gundu Rao, Veerappa Moily, J. H. Patel and S.M. Krishna each played a pivotal role in the development of Information Technology and Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) in Bangalore. When R. K. Baliga, Founder of the Electronics City proposed the concept of developing the electronic city in the early 1970s it was met with skepticism but Chief Minister D. Devaraj Urs at that time supported him and approved the project. This initial seed investment by the Karnataka State Government in 1976 laid the foundation for the Electronics City.

ilicon Valley of India

The Silicon Valley of India is a nickname of the Indian city of Bangalore. The name signifies Bangalore's status as a hub for information technology (IT) companies in India and is a comparative reference to the original Silicon Valley, based around Santa Clara Valley, California, a major hub for IT companies in the United States. Bangalore, however, is located on a plateau and not in a valley; the use of the term in reference to Bangalore is not truly toponymous. One of earliest mentions of this sobriquet occurred in late 1980s in the "Indian Express".The Indian Express (Bangalore Edition). 6 Nov. 1988] The more prevalent application of the nickname Bangalore began in the 1990sHeitzman, James. [http://www.india-seminar.com/2001/503/503%20james%20heitzman.htm "Becoming silicon valley"] . India-seminar.com. 2001] based on a concentration of firms specialising in Research and Development (R&D), electronics and software production.

The Electronics City was 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 convert|335|acre|km2 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. 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".

The article made references to studies of Bangalore published by United States Agency for International Development (USAID) that favourably evaluated Bangalore's capacity to grow into a high technology hub, similar to the Silicon Valley. The publication also published interviews with IT industry professionals on the state of the IT industry in Bangalore and their perceptions of what lay ahead in the future. Selected quotes from the interviews included:

If the Centre looks at Bangalore to be made into Silicon Valley, it would certainly become the Silicon Valley; If you are talking of a Silicon Valley kind of atmosphere, then Bangalore already has it, but if you are talking of a product a day, then we are far from it; Bangalore is certainly emerging as a software and R&D subcontracting centre for multinationals; It is not an unreasonable comparison to make between Bangalore city and Silicon Valley; Bangalore has the ingredients to become Silicon Valley... It is probably the only city in India that could become one.

The turn of the millennium witnessed the growth of internet based technologies which resulted in the dotcom boom. Bangalore's IT industry grew during this period with the establishment of local and foreign IT companies. In 2001, "BusinessWeek" published an article entitled "India's Silicon Valley" which traced the growth of the IT industry in India and particularly in Bangalore. The use of the term "Silicon Valley of India" to refer to Bangalore grew in local media and as time progressed, in international media too. An article entitled "Is the Next Silicon Valley Taking Root in Bangalore?" appeared in the "New York Times" in 2006Rai, Saritha. [http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/20/business/worldbusiness/20bangalore.html?ex=1300510800&en=993a11e65908ab91&ei=5088 "Is the Next Silicon Valley Taking Root in Bangalore?"] . The New York Times. 20 Mar. 2006] Indeed, some articles in the western media wondered if the original Silicon Valley would one day be functionally replaced by BangaloreMorphy, Erika. [http://www.newsfactor.com/story.xhtml?story_title=Bangalore-Besting-Silicon-Valley-&story_id=26088 "Bangalore Besting Silicon Valley?"] . 29 Jul. 2004]

Shashi Tharoor, has suggested that in place of the cliché of "Silicon Valley of India", "Silicon Plateau of India" would be appropriate. [http://www.hinduonnet.com/thehindu/mag/2002/11/10/stories/2002111000620300.htm Article in The Hindu]

Aerospace and Aviation industries

Long before Bangalore was called the Silicon Valley of India, the city made its name as headquarters to some of the largest public sector heavy industries of India. The Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) headquarters was based in Bangalore, and was dedicated to research and development activities for indigenous fighter aircraft for the Indian Air Force. With over 9,500 employees, it is one of the largest public sector employers in Bangalore.

Today, HAL manufactures, under license, various fighter aircraft for the Indian Air Force (IAF) including Sukhoi 30 Flankers and Jaguars. HAL also develops indigenous products for the IAF such as HAL Tejas, HAL Dhruv and HAL HF-24 Marut.

The National Aerospace Laboratories (NAL) is also headquartered in Bangalore and is dedicated to the development of civil aviation technologies. Incorporated in 1960, NAL often works in conjunction with the HAL and has a staff strength of over 1,300 employees. NAL also investigates aircraft malfeasance.

A convert|1000|acre|km2|sing=on special economic zone for the aerospace industry is being setup near the upcoming Bangalore International Airport. Bangalore is also home to large domestic airlines - Simplifly Deccan and Kingfisher Airlines.

Manufacturing Industries

Other heavy industries in Bangalore include Bharat Heavy Electricals Limited (BHEL), Indian Telephone Industries (ITI), Bharat Earth Movers Limited (BEML), Hindustan Machine Tools (HMT) and Hindustan Motors (HM), even though majority of these companies are now considered as not performing well.

Bangalore is also becoming a destination for the automotive industry. Toyota has a manufacturing plant in Bangalore while Daihatsu is planning on building a factory soon. Hindustan Motors also has a manufacturing facility in Bangalore as does Volvo Trucks.

Bangalore houses many small and medium scale industries in its Peenya industrial area that claimed to be one of the biggest in Asia 30-years ago.

Space technology

In June 1972, the Government of India set up the Space Commission and Department of Space (DOS). India's premier space research organization, the ISRO was created under the DOS and headquartered in Bangalore. The main objective of ISRO includes development of satellites and launch vehicles. Aryabhata, India's first satellite, was developed and successfully launched by ISRO. Since then, the organization has successfully launched numerous other satellites such as Bhaskara, Rohini, APPLE, and the INSAT series, and successfully deployed PSLVs and GSLVs. ISRO also heads India's ambitious moon program.

Information Technology

Bangalore is called the 'Silicon Valley of India' due to the large number of information technology companies located there. Many multinational corporations, especially computer hardware and software giants, have operations in Bangalore.

Bangalore's IT industry is divided into two main "clusters" [http://www.unido.org/file-storage/download?file_id=41650] — Electronics City and Whitefield. New clusters in Bellandur and Challaghatta have emerged in the last few years along the Outer and Inner Ring Roads and in C. V. Raman Nagar near Old Madras Road.

Electronics City, located in the southern outskirts of Bangalore, is an industrial park spread over 330 acres (1.3 km²). Electronics City was formed in 1978 [http://www.keonics.com/infra_elecity1.htm] . 3M, Hewlett Packard and Siemens are some of Electronic City's clients. Infosys and Wipro, India's second and third largest software companies, are headquartered in Electronics City. The Software Technology Parks of India, Bangalore (STPI) was started at Electronics City in 1991 by the Ministry of Information Technology. STPI Bangalore counts among the premier and oldest Internet Service Providers (ISP) in India. It was the first center to be Internet-enabled in India. Nortel Networks is a prominent client of STPI Bangalore.

Whitefield cluster is home to the International Technology Park Bangalore. It was created as a result of a joint venture between India and Singapore in January 1994. It is a large facility, comprising 6 buildings — "Discoverer", "Innovator", "Creator", "Explorer" , "Inventor" and "Navigator". The 7th building, belonging to TCS, is in the process of being built. The Export Promotion Zone(EPIP) in Whitefield provides campus facilities for SAP, iGATE, Dell, TCS, Unisys, Delphi, Huawei, Oracle, Perot Systems. Captive centres of Tesco, Shell, Aviva, GM, GE and DaimlerChrysler are also located in Whitefield.

The Inner Ring Road cluster near the HAL Airport in Challaghatta includes Dell, Microsoft, IBM, Yahoo, NetApp, McAfee, Bearing Point, Fidelity, ANZ, LG, Covansys, Synergy, PSI Data, Target, Misys, Dendrite, Sasken, BPL Sanyo, OpenSilicon and Lenovo.

The Bellandur Outer Ring Road cluster houses Accenture, Intel, Aricent, Symbol, Cadence, Cisco, Nokia, Honeywell, ARM, Cummins, JP MorganChase, Oracle, Logica CMG and i2 Technologies.

Bagmane Tech Park located in C. V. Raman Nagar off Old Madras Road, houses i-flex Solutions, Motorola, Texas Instruments, Samsung, Dell and Cognizant, among other companies.

In August 2005, the Bangalore Forum for IT (BFIT), which consists of 18 major multinational IT firms including Sun Microsystems, Texas Instruments, Philips, Novell, vMoksha, Synopsis, Hewlett-Packard and Motorola, threatened to boycott the Bangalore IT convention. The proposed boycott was designed to indicate the displeasure of local and international technology companies with the city's lack of progress on the infrastructural front. Increasingly, new IT centers are being built away from this city due to long inner-city commute times, poor infrastructure, high land and labor costs, increasing environmental problems and labor retention issues.

Biotechnology

Biotechnology is a rapidly expanding field in the city. Bangalore accounts for at least 97 of the approximately 240 biotechnology companies in India. Interest in Bangalore as a base for biotechnology companies stems from Karnataka's comprehensive biotechnology policy, described by the Karnataka Vision Group on Biotechnology. [ [http://www.bangaloreit.com/html/helpdesk/docs/visiongroup.doc Bangaloreit.com ] ] In 2003-2004, Karnataka attracted the maximum venture capital funding for biotechnology in the country - $8 million. Biocon, headquartered in Bangalore, is the nation's leading biotechnology company and ranks 16th in the world in revenues.

Institute of Bioinformatics and Applied Biotechnology (IBAB), initiated by Biotechnology vision group, ICICI and Biocon (located at ITPL) is trying to shape revolutionary scientists in the field.

Like the software industry which initially drew most of its workforce from the local public sector engineering industries, the biotechnology industry had access to talent from the National Center of Biological Sciences (NCBS) and the Indian Institute of Science (IISc).

And Indian Biotechnology Research Organisation (IBRO) is recently under process of development to boost Biotechnology Growth in India, providing the Advanced Research and Talent pool to India from IBRO, whose mission and vission is Research and Development in Biotechnology to make India as a Global Leader in Biotechnology.

References

See also

* Bangalore
* Economy of India [Indian Biotechnology Research Organisation (IBRO)http://www.biotechnologyindia.org]

External links

* [http://www.isro.gov.in The Official Website for The Indian Space Research Organisation]
* [http://www.keonics.com The Official Website for Keonics]
* http://www.keonics.com/infra_elecity1.htm
* [http://in.rediff.com/money/2004/mar/03guest1.htm Is Bangalore really a silicon valley? Comparison with the real Silicon Valley]
* [http://www.asienkunde.de/articles/A103_Dittrich.pdf Bangalore: India's Hightech-Capital]
* [http://www.iimahd.ernet.in/publications/data/2006-05-02rbasant.pdf Bangalore cluster: Evolution, growth and challenges - An examination of the IT industry in Bangalore]
* [http://www.ccsindia.org/ccsindia/interns2006/Garment%20workers%20in%20Bangalore%20-%20Naiyya.pdf The Garment Industry in Bangalore]
* [http://www.biotechnologyindia.org The Official Website IBRO]