The ecosystem of Bangalore is unfriendly to let the city grow at the pace of Silicon Valley. The city is crowded, and traffic, particularly during peak hours, becomes menacingly difficult to navigate. The civic infrastructure is cracking too. A lot needs to be done
The Prime Minister has enunciated a very laudable objective of ‘Start up India’. It’s fructification is essential to absorb annually (at least partially) 10 million new job-seekers and to optimally leverage brain power and inherent entrepreneurial ability of India; eventually to build a platform of double-digit GDP growth for decades to come. large-scale manufacturing companies alone can neither handle the mammoth challenge of new job-seekers nor harness the talent of India fully.
Apparently, the political executive is seized of the objective and is at work to create the facilitation process — legislative and administrative. However, creating a wave of entrepreneurial upsurge to conceive, architect, develop and nurture new enterprises needs an ecosystem. Such an ecosystem has four fundamental pillars: Physical infrastructure; legislative, administrative and judicial forbearance; availability of the required quality of manpower; and easy accessibility to the necessary financial capital.
The best example of such an ecosystem can be seen in the bay area of the California State (the US), also called the Silicon Valley. Recreating such an ecosystem is a process and can be accomplished over a period of time, provided, however, the determination of the political executive is unwavering irrespective of the periodical changes following the mandate of the people of India in various States and indeed, at the Centre.
The need for creating an ecosystem comes from what I like to call in capital market terminology, CTCl — expanded to C= Convenience, T= Tolerance, C= Coordination and l= liquidity.
The convenience is described as the ease of travel to work place and back home. In Silicon Valley, entrepreneur geeks move from home to office, office to children’s school to home in a matter of few minutes. They don’t waste time in traffic jams or covering long distances. They operate from office and home with equal ease and concentration, as travel fatigue does not impair their physique or intellectual spirits.
The tolerance can be catalogued as the freedom to dress, conduct and leverage the system. Tolerance also includes acceptance of failure by the financiers, other resource-providers and the society at large. In Silicon Valley, entrepreneurs hardly dress up formally and are most often seen in T-shirts and jeans. Failure is not despised. It is accepted as a part of life, indeed celebrated as experience. The entrepreneur moves on from one failure to another until he or she eventually succeeds.
The coordination means synergy among entrepreneurs, academic institutions and administrative authorities. All the required support system is not only available nearby and easily but is on call and does not function at cross-purposes in the Silicon Valley area. liquidity connotes easy availability of financial resources, whenever needed. Silicon Valley venture capitalists are patient with the upstarts and accept failure of the unit financed as experiential learning. In fact, the ratio of successful and failure to number of ventures financed is not more than 1:5.
Bangalore city seems to have become a geography of start-ups in India. Entrepreneurs can be seen in small cubicles, in their own homes and even on the roads — conceiving, designing and working to create a new enterprise.
However, the ecosystem of Bangalore is unfriendly to let the city grow at the pace of Silicon Valley. The city is crowded and traffic, particularly during peak hours, becomes menacingly difficult to navigate. Often, it takes an hour to travel a distance of just about five to seven kilometres even by car. The civic infrastructure is cracking and living conditions are becoming more painful by the day. However, the so-called ‘Silicon Valley of India’ can rub shoulders with Silicon Valley of the United States in a decade’s time in case the suggestions stated below are implemented.
The entire stretch of expressway between Bangalore and Mysore should be developed on both sides like a bay area by creating a dozen new (small) townships with a capacity of two lakh to five lakh residents each. All these towns should be developed as smart cities with ultra-modern physical and civic infrastructure, digital connectivity and with the presence of established financial institutions. A number of private builders would be willing to develop such townships, provided the entire work of developing a township is given to each one of them and the Government genuinely and honestly engages with them in the process of development as partners.
legislative and administrative forbearance of a high order must be created, so that the formation, operation and closure of enterprises are greatly facilitated. Eventually, the environment should enable starting a company in just a couple of days and closing it down with no future consequences, a few weeks, if not days.
All these towns must have quick access to the international airport at Bangalore by passing the city and its traffic. These towns should also have branches/connectivity with Universities, which can help the entrepreneurs in obtaining intellectual inputs easily. The cost of opening and closing an enterprise should be at a bare minimum.
Once a broad-based ecosystem is created in this area, venture capitalists will flock in droves and provide adequate financial resources for entrepreneurs to experiment, fail at times and create new, vibrant and value-added enterprises. Given the will of the Government of Karnataka and supported by the Union Government, Bangalore can become a catalyst for similar such ‘start-up valleys’ springing up in other part of the country. India needs thousands, nay, millions, of new enterprises to provide jobs, economic sustenance to the people of India and eventual prosperity to the nation at large.
(The writer is former Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Board of India and the life Insurance Corporation of India)