Bangaluru in the pre IT years
Till late 1980, Bengaluru was the garden city and the pensioners’ paradise of India. With shady tree lined broad roads, clean water, salubrious climate, peace loving people, Bengaluru was most sought-after city to lead a healthy and peaceful life post retirement.
In fact, the city was known for large government owned institutes and manufacturing units. Those days, India had command & control economy, which was called the era of “License raj”, as one had to have license for everything and no competition was allowed. Because of this, the government units had no rivals to fight. They (government units) were legends in their own fields within India. As a result, workers too had no compulsion to perform, yet their jobs were guaranteed for life despite doing shoddy work.
Change started
However, things began to change in the 1980s with the establishment of Infosys, Tech Mahindra, Wipro computers and other small IT companies in Bengaluru. The founders of these companies were young, well educated and dashing. They were the kind of breed who would do whatever required to bring success in their lives. As success breed more success, more companies got started that brought in even more success to their founders. Overnight, Bengaluru turned into “el dorado” for startup founders and job seekers.
Since these companies considered to be seriously niche, only geeks could land up there to do high-tech work for US/ European clients. These folks were paid “jaw-dropping” salary in the Indian context. The challenges in the job and the sky-high salary attracted people from all over India to Bengaluru. That’s when the yuppy culture got seeded. India’s first pub serving draught beer and hip restaurants and bars catering to these rich geeks were opened in the city back then.
Monumental change
However, what brought the momentous change was the opening of Texas Instruments and Intel’s technology divisions in Bengaluru in the late 1980s. These companies hired techies to do outsourced tech work in the city. Their attempt was runaway success and they brought more works to Bengaluru office and hired even more techies. This was noticed by their competitors and they too wanted to take a plunge to harness the best tech talent.
Thus began the mad rush of MNCs to Bengaluru starting from 1990s. They were opening offices like crazy and got into competition to hire the best manpower by luring them with lot of money and perks. The 2000s saw whos-who of the Large, medium and small enterprises jostling for space in Bangalore to open their offices. They wanted to quickly hire the best available talent and begin their operations at the earliest, and this went on at a brisk pace.
The new Millenia saw the unprecedented growth of Bengaluru which made it the real hub for technology, innovation, R&D in India.
Mysuru’s arrival on stage
With the announcement of ISMC’s Fab unit to be located near Mysuru, the world took a note of the city. The news flashed in all business dailies across globe, the brand Mysuru got international recognition, after all ISMC won’t choose any place only on pure financial incentives alone. There are many factors which go into finalising a location, important among them are talent availability and closer to a tech hub that specailises in fabless design. Mysuru has talent and is close to Bengaluru which houses 85 fabless design houses.
Success breeds more success
ISMC’s success will bring in more such fab units, design houses, testing/ verification units to Mysuru creating whole lot of jobs. This will attracts people from all over India and beyond to encash the opportunities. What change the opening of Intel and Texas Instruments tech centers did to Bangaluru, ISMC fab unit’s success will do to Mysuru.
By this one can easily conclude Mysuru’s Bangaluru moment has arrived. Whether it is good OR bad is left to the discretion of the readers.
Nice to hear that govt is considering mysore now.
Try to expand airport so that’s companies can think of putting the legs in our city.