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Strategies & Market Trends : ahhaha's ahs -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Ahda who wrote (2520)	6/24/2001 2:26:49 PM
From: Ahda	Respond to of 24758

6/23/2001 7:46:00 AM By Jim Christie SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - With U.S. venture capitalists already pushing into India's growing technology sector, officials from Bangalore came to Silicon Valley, touting the region's advantages as a low-cost, high-quality center production and service center. The goal of the road show was to draw more business to the Indian city of Bangalore, a metro-area with a population of 6 million, 21 engineering-focused colleges and more than 900 software companies that have sprung up in the past decade. ``With the slowdown in the U.S. and elsewhere, companies can save a lot of money in Bangalore,'' Vivek Kulkarni, secretary for information technology in India's ``Silicon State'' of Karnataka told Reuters. ``In Bangalore, you can get an excellent programmer for $300 a month,'' he said Friday. ``Real estate in the IT parks is about 25 cents per square foot and they have excellent infrastructure, in terms connectivity, power and security.'' According to a projection by India's National Association of Software and Service Companies, venture capital flowing into India will jump from $500 million in 1999-2000 to $1.2 billion in 2001-2002. Indian entrepreneurs in the United States are also raising more venture funding: $2.85 billion for just 100 U.S.-based tech companies led by Indian entrepreneurs over the last 15 months, according to the IndUS Business Journal. ``The brand image is already well known, but we want to reinforce it,'' Kulkarni added. ``We also want to tell people about the industries that are coming up.'' Those new industries include call service centers, a necessity for tech companies that Bangalore's entrepreneurs hope to draw with the city's large number of English speaking, college-educated workers eager for office jobs. Dell Computer Corp (DELL) set up a 1,000-employee call center in Bangalore just last week, part of an increased U.S. corporate presence in Bangalore. General Electric Co (GE) also has a research center, the company's largest outside the United States, officials said. ``There has been large interaction with U.S. already,'' Kulkarni said. ``Seventy percent of our business last year was with the U.S. The total was $1.6 billion.'' Kulkarni said Karnataka expected that by 2008 Bangalore-based businesses would account for $15 billion of an estimated $50 billion in Indian exports.