Bangalore: Silicon valley or Coolie valley
Posted by Ashish on September 3rd, 2005
I received an email from one of my school friend which goes like this:
Hi ashish…..as I have told you that I really love to read your blogs,
and its quite a soothing experience for me that there is one among us
who really has the courage and ability to say whatever he thinks,
probably I can see a leader and mentor in making…..kudos!!!
Well, this mail is just to ask you read something which really compelled
me to think beyond ….., beyond my personal goals, and country as
whole..it asks us (IT guys) where are we heading to? …….I would like
you to read this….I am sending the link:
http://www.rediff.com/money/2004/mar/03guest1.htm
Also, would love to know about your future goals……and what are your
future aspirations.
Now, I can see that my friend has clearly been disturbed by this article and I don’t think he is completely unjustified in his concern. Having said that, I can only say that this is one of the most immature article I have read - the thoughts, and the use of words, didn’t impress me a bit. All that he emphasized in his article was the fact that Indian companies are predominantly services company. Right, very right! I totally agree with his assessment here - but how does that make Bangalore a ‘Coolie valley’ is something that is beyond my understanding.
Here is my answer to him:
Mr. Dasarathi,
Let me start by putting a disclaimer here that my response is based just on this article that you published - and without knowing your other credentials.
You have made a very correct observation that Indian (Bangalore, as you say specifically) IT industry is predominantly services oriented, with a very few companies that are doing purely products work. This is something that has been brought to notice by a lot of folks earlier also - and is a very well known fact. So, I was least surprised when you brought up this point. But what surprised me was your treatment of the subject. The very fact that you described a services company as the one lacking in innovation amuses me.
Innovation is a very broad term - and it’s not people like you or me who would (and should) tell people what is the ‘right’ innovation. In my perspective, both the sectors do innovate. Products companies target more on the technical aspect of it whereas a services company focus on the process innovation. And, I do think that the services company were the need of the hour in India when it started and that is what has put the Indian IT industry on the world-map.
Having said that, I am myself a huge fan of tech and product start-ups. But, at the same time, I believe in doing business for the sake of making things better for myself, for people who care about me and for the rest of the world - in that order. So, in my perspective, it just made sense for the Indian companies to do services business when they started - knowing exactly the market (which is still driven predominantly by the US) and its demands. But, yes, things are changing and we have come up to a stage where we have started to witness the Indian companies creating products. The percentage is still abysmally low but we have taken a step, a big one, in that direction. And I do see a lot of products coming out of India in the near future. TeNeT group is an excellent example of that - and I have personally seen the awesome work being done in those companies under the superior guidance of Dr. Ashok Jhunjhunwala.
The whole thing makes a lot of sense to me. Securing yourself before trying to change the world is the philosophy of a lot of people - and I don’t see anything wrong in that. If I had a time-machine, I would have liked to take you 10 year ahead in the future and shown you all kind of stuff Indian software companies (with a lot of tech start-ups) would be doing.
-Ashish
September 4th, 2005 at 9:25 am
Hi,
I read that article too , the points that author has highlighted are not totally baseless but he has sort of oversimplified things.
For instance as you mentioned that innovation can’t happen in service is an untrue claim.
The majority(& biggest) of the IT players are services company as of now but that does’nt mean product companies are inexistent in Bangalore. Some other examples that come to my mind are NetScaler, JamCracker. Emuzed , Navini Networks, Aarohi Communication etc. They are all pure product companies started by Indians serving a global market.
If today there are less % of product companies does not mean that this situation is going to extend like that. Moreover there are indication which suggests it is otherwise, for instance large number of VC firms ( in the last 8 months) are queueing up in India seeing huge potential of product companies based out of India.
I moved to bangalore from gurgaon last year around this time and in the last one year & I have observed that bangalore no doubt has tons of software service companies but it also has the highest number of product companies and is very well poised in the next 3-5 years to be the silicon valley and be home of some of the best billion dollar tech companies.
Cheers,
Rajan
September 4th, 2005 at 4:40 pm
[…] I have a cable internet connection(yep a hotwire one remember my login script) , yesterday i got disconnected only to discover that my cable had been cut-off at 10:30 in the night. With one of the mandatory suban assignments to submit, i had a real good night’s sleep. The script was not working till 10:30 at night. Today morning i dutifully go to one of the nearby cyber cafe to submit the assignment , hehehe talk about getting disconnected. Did submit assignment , now trying to make sense of ADA (analysis and design of algorithms) course , good prof but fibonacci heaps makes my day a bit more nicer . Minor ends tomorrow , more later . Read this blog post by Ashish Kumar, very intresting . Will post my comments later. […]
September 7th, 2005 at 5:46 pm
Rajan,
I am not saying that Mr. Dasarathi’s points are baseless. I would have whole-heartedly agreed if he had just said that, in India, the number of services companies is a order of magnitude more than products companies. But I felt that this article was demeaning the accomplishments of the very companies that brought India on the world map - something that I reacted against.
My point is that - it’s mostly the market which drives the kind of innovation a company does. For example - it’s much easier to create a products company in the US - not only because of the availability of more resources but more because of the proximity with the market the product is being created for. It’s much much harder to create a product for the Indian market - so even any Indian product company will be targeting the global (US) market - they do have a bit of dis-advantage against their counterparts in the US.
Similarly, India has an advantage over US in services business - because of the cost and because of the manpower.
I didn’t think that the author was making a fair comparison. What was the ‘choice’ of these Indian IT companies was being projected as their ‘compulsion’ and ‘incompetence’ - something I voiced against.
October 8th, 2005 at 10:37 pm
Hello people,
i got here due to my friend sarsij, who told me that one of his friend has started his own venture teckriti, so i was interested as i’ve also started my own venture by the name “Alfione Technologies”, though i’m still in my final year college at BIT Mesra but i like to be independent and the bug doesn’t leave me anyday.
coming to the topic of discussion , betweenb a service company and a product company…
as most of you people have already mentioned that services is fast way to earn money and it’s easy to do because u easilly get cheap labour and some work,
ya that’s true because i don’t think u earn money for your neighbour so the main motto behind doing anything is money … and that’s the catch to survive so even i do the same provide software consultancy.
but who cares if TCS,INFOSYS,WIPRO… don’t then why me but it’s not that with me atleast i think of setting a software company and not a software consultancy not because i know that i’m the best, or i have the expertise, or i can do a great product — you know why i’ll be able ti turn my venture into the real software firm because i have an idea which is as innovative as anything , it’s a great idea becoz my product will be useful somewhere and if i’m successful with the implementation at the right time i’m history.
so friends it’s not that we can’t develop products we can do everything and the requirement is just a path to lead and not to follow.
I have been with the computer since i was a kid and my first computer was a 286 and i have the latest one today, you know what it has made me feel throughout my life that indians are not adventurous and risk takers and that is the hurdle which we need to cross to be what is needed.
because i don’t wanna be a TCS or a Infosys or a wipro or satyam or any other indian it firm i want to be like Microsoft or SUN or Apple.
develop enthusiasm and innovation and not marks.
September 8th, 2006 at 5:21 pm
hi friends,
i m in gurgaon with my parents
i m searching jobs
all of my friends r telling me to come to pune or banglore for job hunting
but i cant
my parents does not allow me
they will allow me to work any where in india
but cant leave me for job hunting anywhere
but if sitting in gurgaon,i get a call from pune or walkin from banglore
i m helpless
as a fresher with 60% marks and no reference, i found no good job in gurgaon
can you suggest me what can i do
January 19th, 2007 at 11:42 am
I think the question isnt about Services or Products. As Mr. Dasarathi puts it - its about ‘Know what’ and ‘Know How’. Its quite strange to see companies like Infosys and Wipro making Billions every year (and growing), but not trying to develop products. Fresh engineering grads from MIT can make products - then why cant Infosys.
The business is evident. So its difficult to get out of a comfy chair. But one will come back to the question - does Infosys ‘know how’ to make products or does it ‘know what’ products to make. We go to the top of the IT mountain and shout loudly - Give us your development work, we are cheaper and better. But what we dont realize is that we are still using Outlook, ASP, JAVA and MS for our development and daily tasks.
I think Indian Tech companies should take up challenge to prove to the IT community world wide that we are not purely good at services and we have what it takes to develop fundamentally ground breaking products. Starting from the concept till the final delivery, we have can do it all.
July 9th, 2008 at 5:41 pm
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