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Bangalore takes tech roadshow to Silicon Valley

With US venture capitalists already pushing into India's growing technology sector, officials from Bangalore came to Silicon Valley on Friday, touting the region's advantages as a low-cost, high-quality centre production and service centre.

The goal of the roadshow was to draw more business to Bangalore, a metro-area with a population of 6 million, 21 engineering-focused colleges and more than 900 software companies that have sprung up in the past decade.

"With the slowdown in the US and elsewhere, companies can save a lot of money in Bangalore," Vivek Kulkarni, secretary for information technology in India's "Silicon State" of Karnataka told Reuters.

"In Bangalore, you can get an excellent programmer for $300 a month," he said "Real estate in the IT parks is about 25 cents per square foot and they have excellent infrastructure, in terms of connectivity, power and security." According to a projection by India's National Association of Software and Service Companies, venture capital flowing into India will jump from $500 million in1999-2000 to $1.2 billion in 2001-2002.

Indian entrepreneurs in the United States are also raising more venture funding: $2.85 billion for just 100 US-based tech companies led by Indian entrepreneurs over the last 15 months, according to the IndUS Business Journal.

"The brand image is already well known, but we want to reinforce it," Kulkarni added. "We also want to tell people about the industries that are coming up."

Those new industries include call service centres, a necessity for tech companies that Bangalore's entrepreneurs hope to draw with the city's large number of English speaking, college-educated workers eager for office jobs.

Dell Computer Corp set up a 1,000-employee call centre in Bangalore just last week, part of an increased US corporate presence in Bangalore. General Electric Co also has a research centre, the company's largest outside the United States, officials said.

"There has been large interaction with US already," Kulkarni said. "Seventy per cent of our business last year was with the US The total was $1.6 billion."

Kulkarni said Karnataka expected that by 2008 Bangalore-based businesses would account for $15 billion of an estimated $50 billion in Indian exports.

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