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What Indian city is best conducive to entrepreneurship ?
via Startup Dunia by pranav on May 12, 2008
A distant friend asked me this question during a conversation yesterday:
What Indian city is best conducive to entrepreneurship ?
Based out of a tier - III city, his town lacks reliable broadband access, human capital is not appropriately skilled and there’s a lack of exchange of intellectual ideas amongst his peers. He’s contemplating moving to a bigger city, where he can get easy access to ideas, capital and skilled people.
The question really got me thinking. Which Indian city would be most suitable for me to setup shop, if I were an Internet entrepreneur in India ?
Mumbai would be prohibitively expensive for majority of the startups, unless you have a home there and you dont really need to rent office space etc. That leaves Pune, Delhi-NCR, Chennai, Bangalore and Hyderabad in the picture (surprising, but you dont really hear a lot about Hyderabad in the context of startups etc.- other than ISB). The list can be further trimmed if there’s a possibility that you’ll need VC funding, since majority of the VC’s require that you relocate to the same city that they are based in.
Personally, I’d opt for either Bangalore or Pune (Chennai weather is not for me). I’d love to hear where you’d base your startup, if you were/are an entrepreneur.
As an entrepreneur, have you faced a scenario where you would have had better access to resources if you were located elsewhere ? Do you think life would have been easy in terms of hiring, networking etc. if you were located in a startup hub ?
Comments
- May 13, 2008, Shashi commented: Makes me wonder how you came to the conclusion of Mumbai being prohibitively expensive. If you are a startup, say operating in media industry, you have to be in Mumbai. Also, if you are startup, most probably, your office space requirement will be comparatively low. (At one point in time, in our Mumbai office we had 20-odd people occupying may be 600 sqft office.)I worked in Mumbai for almost 3 yrs and moved (back) to Pune recently. Of these two, it's difficult for me to pick one which is distinctly better than the other.
- May 13, 2008, pranav commented: @shashi,i've a cpl of very close friends who moved to mumbai - i've first hand heard their experiences on renting an apt and finding suitable office space. if you have been in-around the Mumbai area for sometime, the prices may not come as a shocker, but for many of us, coming from elsewhere, we would find it really expensive. about needing to be located in b'bay if you are a media startup, i completely agree about any constraints imposed by the domain itself. along the same lines, if a large percentage of your potential customer base in located in a particular city, you'll probably opt to be based in that same city.
- May 13, 2008, sagar commented: Being a Hyerabadi, I personally prefer to do a startup in Hyderabad. Reasons to add would be reasonable rents (doubt if the prices are still the same as 2 yrs back) and most of all cheap skilled man power. With lots and lots of Engineering Colleges around you can easily get young minds to work for you at much less cost compared to other cities. Though the kind of business exposure you get in Mumbai is different and vast to what to get in Hyderabad, because we are talking Internet startup here, I think you can manage the backend operations from here. So my ideal solution is to have the initial development center in Hyderabad and after the roll out have a marketing Office @ Mumbai at later stage.
- May 14, 2008, Ankur commented: Pune is the place to be. Loads of IT Colleges, Salary rate are more stable vis - a - vi Bangalore. Property / Rent rates are reasonable (Lower than Bangalore, Mumbai). Having stayed in Bangalore and Mumbai, i feel Pune has the best of both.
- May 14, 2008, Cyril Gupta commented: My company is located in Delhi, the country's capital, and probably the worst place to do any kind of business. The state government has made it a policy to put as many hurdles as they can in front of the entrepreneurs. The cost of the ownership is really prohibitive. There's even a tax on parking your car in your own space! We're a developer of packaged software and websites, and enjoy good margins, additionally we own the premises we are housed in. In spite of all these factors we feel a need to shift away from Delhi.At present we're considering: Goa, Bhopal, Pune, Hyderabad, Bangalore.Goa's at the top of the list because it's got good weather, good working environment, better political atmosphere then rest of the India, and outsider friendly natives.
- May 14, 2008, Azeez commented: @ Sagar I'm also from Andhra...U said Hyd is good place for a startup.Bcoz U site that it has more than (350+) engg colleges...I bet U If U find a reasonable student to venture for a startup, leave these colleges I mean IIIT,RECs, they are different,majority will opt for foreign studies..remaining students most likely will come from normal colleges,example If I say I'm going for startup..they will put faces blank like whats the culture of startup..Here not student decides,but his parents are trump card holders,If at least he gets a job in some not famous IT co,he will not valued..Bcoz U know why the Bride's father will not show any interest in him..More over he will not get enough Dowry... The major Four IT Cos are so rooted.U should not surprise if their names attached to their last name..for at least upto 21.12.2012 don't think of startup in Biryani city.Bangalore is nice place...And moreover Entrepreneurship is deep rooted there..Test Ur luck there..I don't know much about North india....(Hey Folks don't take it as serious...)
- May 14, 2008, Raghu commented: Hi everybody! i am an internet entrepreneur and based in bhopal. Since the question is specifically about dot-coms, i would suggest that its wise to spend the 'gestation period' in your home town. that way you minimize your day-to-day expenses, and can focus better on your startup. resources required for such businesses are available equally in most indian cities (specifically broadband)Ecosystem for dot-coms exist on Internet itself (i agree that VC and technology ecosystems may exist physically in some big cities, but you need them after the gestation period).We ourselves have take 2 years to come out of gestation period, in which lot of course correction has happened, and revenues have only started to come in recently. had we been in mumbai/bangalore/delhi it would have become impossible to pull along (financially).One constraint that surely in small cities is of skilled developers. if i get a job application from a developer in bhopal i can safely assume that he/she isn't good enough to migrate to banglore/pune etc. We however bypassed this constraint by leveraging open source software.
- May 14, 2008, Sudhir commented: I don't think any Indian city is startup friendly when you need to complete so many formalities. But I think Chandigarh is a good choice in tier two cities because the real estate price are not that high and I believe you can get skilled manpower in Chandigarh.
- May 14, 2008, pranav commented: @cyril,are there other tech startups / companies operating out of goa ? you're probably one of the first companies that i'm (personally) hearing about shifting to goa. @raghu,thanks for sharing your experiences. you make a very valid point - spending the initial gestation period in your own hometown..that way, you can probably piggyback living expenses at your home itself :-)
Copyright © Pranav Dharma -StartupDunia, 2006-2008
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