Delhi NCR seems to have emerged as one of the strongest startup ecosystems in the country. From internet to mobility and ITES/BPO/KPO, the quality of startups is compelling. However, of late, there has been a view that the tech ecosystem is not keeping pace. I was having a chat with a friend, who pointed out the following “facts”:
- HasGeek is been doing some amazing work in tech events…they are probably the leaders in the tech. events space. They tried NCR couple of times and now have written off. I’m trying to work with them to bring some of their events in NCR.
- In50Hrs has written of Delhi. They did 2 events and now have moved to Trivandrum.
- MobileHackday – a hackathon done recently at one of the companies in gurgaon did not attract many people…they had to close the event and did not even have the jury members to come and look at the prototypes.
- At Startup Weekend Delhi, there are around 12-14 ideas presented…atleast 8 teams present a powerpoint presentation and probably 4 present a prototype…Bangalore is just the opposite.
- Some startups have started moving the tech. base to Bangalore 🙂
I have not checked with respective organizations mentioned above, but will take this at face value given the credibility of the person who mentioned the above. Also, given the spread of events, I am making an assumption that this is not a reflection on quality of individual events. I also do not view this as a notion of delhi versus bangalore, but more an issue around the depth of tech ecosystem in delhi area, and whether it is growing stronger or weaker. I say “tech ecosystem” not in the semiconductor research sense, but typical depth that startups are relying on (application/ systems level).
In fact, the other thread it sparked in my mind was cultural and cutting across the country – are we propagating a culture of startup formation that relies on learning from the community and widespread exchange of ideas? That could be the other reason where founders and their teams might be putting their heads down and building their business, rather than throng events.
Would love to get comments on this. And if this is a real issue, what can we do about it.
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Alok – Interesting post given the discussions over the years. Back in 1993, Pune and Blr were evenly placed as R&D offshoring was taking off. By 1999 Blr had pulled ahead and eventually over 70% of the MNC R&D captives ended up coming up in Blr. Today I see the same dynamic playing out for tech startups that don’t need a feet-on-the-street sales force. I think Blr will pull far ahead of NCR in the years ahead. Blr has a 25 year old culture of peer learning that is responsible for this. The only other city that comes close is Chennai.
Alok,
While I cannot speak for the Delhi “ecosystem”, I can tell you that in Bangalore, events are a poor indicator for the health of the local ecosystem.
I have been a tech entrepreneur in Bangalore for a long time and haven’t attended any of the events that you have mentioned and of the scores of tech founders and hundreds of startup employees that I know, not more than a handful would have attended any of these events either (HasGeek is a notable exception but it is a different creature compared to the others).
Most, if not all, of the folks who attend these events are either wannabe entrepreneurs or conference whores – and they are certainly not representative of the Bangalore ecosystem in any meaningful way. The ones who are would probably be found squirreled away in tiny garages working on their startups!
Cheers,
Sumanth
Saw this on twitter. I partially agree with you – Delhi produces enough tech talent but they don’t stay in Delhi over longer term and whatever talent is there – deep domain expertise is usually missing. Bangalore is definitely ahead due to its history of large MNC’s employing local talent on global tech products. However, Bangalore also has the reverse problem of attrition – a good guy has too many options at any given time.
I guess outsourcing of the kind you are suggesting can possibly work once a startup reaches a certain scale – say 100+ employees.
– An entrepreneur in Delhi
Mukund sent me his note – http://bestengagingcommunities.com/2013/04/12/delhi-entrepreneurs-will-outsource-technology-bangalore-will-outsource-sales-and-mumbai-everything-but-finance-startups-entrepreneurs/
I tend to agree with him that core tech startups (storage, cloud, networking) are fewer in delhi, though we see fair bit in classic enterprise software.