The Bangalore Brand

Competition to Bangalore has come from cities like Hyderabad, Chennai, Pune, NCR, Kolkata, Jaipur, Chandigarh, Pune, and Kochi, among others. Wipro Ltd., with 11,000 employees in Bangalore, has been looking for growth beyond Bangalore. "Bangalore is a zero-sum game. In terms of infrastructure, there has not been any material improvement in the last five years. As a result, it is becoming difficult to sustain growth here. As part of our retention management, we want to move for an incremental growth outside Bangalore as much as possible," said Vivek Paul, vice-chairman, Wipro. As per reports, IBM Corp. has been considering Kolkata as the hub for its software and IT services activities in India.

A CII paper brought out in 2004 recommended to the Karnataka government to put in place a plan for implementation of infrastructure projects like the IT corridor project and the Bangalore-Mysore Expressway project. In order to decongest Bangalore and spread development across the state, the paper recommended that the government support the development of satellite townships and other cities in Karnataka. According to Nasscom, India is expected to achieve revenues of $62 billion by 2008-09 and $148 billion by 2012 in ITES / IT, at a CAGR of 35 per cent over 2003 to 2012...