With a vibrant startup culture and robust venture capital funding, the Garden City is on the cusp of becoming a global innovation hub. It only needs some big institutes and an efficient mentor ecosystem in place
Over the last decade, Bengaluru has moved up the value chain, from BPO hub to the Silicon Valley of India. Multiple reports and studies point out that it is the preferred destination for homegrown startups and venture capital funding. The city’s IT-services legacy, talent pool and diverse culture have contributed to building brand Bengaluru. However, despite all that, it is still far from becoming a global innovation hub.
Majumdar: Manish, you are part of a global corporation [Xerox Research Centre India] which has a research arm in the city and there are many others like you. How much of an innovation mindset are you witnessing in some of these centres?
Manish Gupta: A lot of innovation [R&D] at these global firms has been invisible to the general public. And very rightly so. There were a lot of very interesting things happening for the Indian market, but they never converted from [being] very interesting ideas to real innovations. If you are working for a multinational corporation and if you come up with an idea which has no real relevance to the US markets, they have trouble understanding those ideas. There is a lot of potential for some of these R&D centres to work more closely with startups, especially on ideas that can help transform India.
Ganapathy: Even with 0.8 percent of the GDP spent on R&D, there is a huge challenge in getting the research out of the labs and into the market. And Bengaluru is a very good example of this. Bengaluru has a constellation of all the national level institutions [such as the IISc and others] and also others like the Narayana Hrudayalaya and the National Institute of Mental Health and Neuroscience [NIMHANS] where innovations could actually be tested. This is one big area that we need to look into. Building the institutional bridges is clearly required.
Shashank: The constraints that India has in terms of cost and accessibility give you a huge leverage in terms of a startup to innovate. For example, we have a tablet that can do multiple things for a doctor in areas where there is no internet connection and no power. So, a doctor can treat patients without having electricity. We can definitely innovate down the pyramid and find innovative solutions. But, I also see the need for Indian entrepreneurs and the Indian ecosystem to try and innovate so that we can take products outside the country. And that’s started to happen.
Srivatsa: Shashank’s point is if we can build products that stand out in the world. See China, which is completely product driven. There is no Facebook or Gmail because they have their own [sites]. In India, the Facebook of India is Facebook and the Google of India is Google. If you want to really up the level of product and design thinking, we should challenge the world.
(This story appears in the 22 January, 2016 issue of Forbes India. To visit our Archives, click here.)