
Can India take on Silicon Valley as a global R&D hub? - nreece
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/11/14/india-rd-hub-silicon-valley/
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dragonquest
I'm Indian and as much as it pains me to say this, its not gonna happen so
fast nor easily. India is different culturally than a lot of other countries
who have a good R & D environment. For example, if a guy or girl is not
married by 35, it is usually frowned upon by the society. This usually leads
to people playing it out safe in the 28-40 years era where its safer to work
in a bigco with guaranteed income.

Pressures built up from social groups and joint families play a large part in
this. Parents in India are usually more proud to say that their child is
working for IBM or Microsoft rather than a small startup.

Also since I'm a resident of the country, I feel the urge in the people to
compete but for needs more basic than in other countries. I'm not pointing to
straight up poverty of farmers or anything you would see in a cover article of
a big magazine, I'm talking about engineers _wanting_ to have a stable job no
matter what. They _want_ a fixed house, they _want_ a guarantee that they'll
be eating from their own money in 6 months. Debts, specially credit cards are
not the norm. There are scores of engineers who do not have a family that will
be able to support them if they don't get external funding.

So for a multitude of reasons, sadly this won't happen. Not soon anyways. Feel
the pulse of the engineers there (yes including me) and you'd know why R & D
is on the backseat.

~~~
paraschopra
Well, you cite perfect examples of the parental and societal pressures that
tend to work against founding a startup. But there is tremendous "underground"
culture of startups in India. Case in point, have a look at
<http://pluggd.in/> or the startup event of India <http://proto.in/>

Agreed that Indian startups are still light years away from achieving the same
_sophistication_ as the Silicon Valley's, but increasingly I am seeing more
and more people jumping into getting their hands dirty. And given enough
startups, purely from a statistical point of view, a few great startups will
eventually emerge from India.

Unfortunately, I will have to agree with you that the state of R&D is poor,
but it is just evolution. We started late and now have lots to catch up!

~~~
paraschopra
Don't really know, why it was downvoted? Can somebody explain?

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jarnold
I've worked for start-ups in Silicon Valley and for a large Internet company
in Bangalore. From what I observed, a large part of the missing element were
skills for new product development. The culture of development is rooted in
large-scale projects. Large plans. Big budgets. Huge teams. As such, the type
of product development skills for the quick-iteration that is needed for
startup development isn't typical practice.

About a year back I was contacted by a CEO of an Indian development house who
couldn't find enough talent to build social-media applications. He was trying
to figure out if he should outsource his projects to San Francisco or
Manhattan.

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subbu
These R&D centers still depend on hired resources. People who sell their time
and services for a salary. But as I understand it, Valley's big portion of
success is in its startups and their founders. People who take risk to create
wealth and jobs. They themselves may not have all the required skills to
succeed. But they hire others to fill that gap. They take that risk as part of
their entrepreneurship. This is what is missing in the R&D centers in India.
There are a lot of bright people working for others. But not for themselves.
This will change in future. But we are not there yet.

My hunch is its going to take a lot more than 5 years.

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indiaboy
How many of you enjoy working with your Indian boss, respect him technically
and as a person, and learn from him (not your Indian peers or subordinates,
but boss)?

There are significant cultural, regulatory/legal, and policy issues to be
solved or evolved before India can take on Silicon Valley.

~~~
luu
Would you mind being more explicit, for those of us who don't have direct
experience with what you're talking about?

At my last start-up, I had an Indian mentor, five years older than me, who had
been through exactly what I was going through. I had tremendous respect for
him, both “technically and as a person”. I learned more from him than I did
from any of my non-Indian friends, co-workers, or bosses.

He's thinking of heading back to India to do a start-up there. I'm not Indian,
but I'd love to spend a few years there, so I might go with him. As far as I
can tell, he would make a great boss. Is there something I'm missing?

~~~
indiaboy
As an Indian, I am absolutely delighted to hear of your positive experience.
Way to go for your mentor, and for you too.

I have never had an Indian boss myself (I work in the US). But I have quite a
few friends who have had, or continue to have (and who confide in me with
their opinions and issues). Naturally I also know a lot of Indians in various
industry or academic positions in the US (developers, managers, directors,
professors). Most of these people (not all) are technically sharp and quite
smart. At the same time when it comes to treating people who work for them,
most of them - I dare say nearly all of them - are amazingly selfish, self-
centered, uncompromising, and hard headed. Tact or diplomacy is virtually non-
existant. The world is centered around them, around what they have done in
life, and around what they plan to do in the future. The end justifies the
means, in many ways, for them. I would even say that backstabbing (for the
next promotion in industry, or so called fame in academia) is the norm. These
cultural issues are just the tip of the iceberg. Mind you, I have specifically
not seen many of these issues with most American managers or profs, or among
foreigners, say, among the Chinese.

As for state policy, legal, and regulatory issues, those are well known at
least among us who have lived in India. It will take me a few more pages to
describe :) Suffice it to say we have a long way to go. A very long way.

For the Indians reading these lines, before you call me a self-hating Desi,
just take an hour and really think about your own life and upbringing and
behavior, and those of other Indians in positions of power whom you know. Be
honest with yourself, if only for one time in your life.

~~~
ramanujan
I am also of Indian ancestry and recognize absolutely nothing valid in your
comment. Do you mean to say that the Chinese Communist party or the people who
caused Enron and the recent collapse of the world financial system are more
ethical?

Of course there are unethical people in every community, but there is zero
evidence for your claim that said behavior is unique to Indians.

~~~
indiaboy
You are over reacting. I am talking about Indians in technical fields
(industry and academia, engineering/software in particular). I am not talking
about "creative" accountants at Enron, or the capitalist Chinese communists,
or Wall Street hedge fund managers.

Anyway, we have a disagreement and I leave it at that.

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ankeshk
Oh I hope so. But I doubt India taking the lead in R&D and innovation. At
least within the next 5 years. I don't see it happening. Except Zoho, you'll
be hard pressed to name any other Indian startup doing extremely well.

Indian startup scene is pretty much like the Chinese startup scene. American
success stories are ripped off and given a local twist. Because this ripping
off is lucrative - but comes without a lot of startup risks.

All the big R&D hubs in India are run by Non-Indian companies (IBM, Intel,
Microsoft)... thats not a coincidence. Indian companies are yet not at the
stage of spending a lot on R&D (medicine and defense are 2 exceptions.)

Yes VC funding is increasing in India. But really - the biggest news I heard
in the last year was a VC investing in a Netflix copycat. And Vinod Khosla
investing in a micro-financing fund in India (copy cat of Grameen Bank etc...)

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madebylaw
_I’ll bet that in 5 years, if you stacked up a TechCrunch 50 of Indian start
ups versus a comparable number of U.S. startups, it would be a pretty even
match._

I think there's something distinctly Indian about making 5 year plans, even if
they sound ludicrous (when I lived there, many people told me that 'India
would be a world superpower in five years'). I think it might have something
to do with this: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five-year_plans_of_India>.

~~~
jagjit
Yeah, the five year plans have been rather a bane for the Indian economy. In
fact, central control and planning in all spheres are generally looked up to
in India. We even used to have joint families which were very common till very
recently - a joint family is where many generations of a family tree under a
patriarch live together. Even businesses till recently were more likely to be
family owned.

Entrepreneurship in India is on the rise now though. But my problem with the
article is that the author is talking about taking on Silicon Valley, but he
does not have a region or even a city to compare. He is just taking a whole
country - India - and talking it up. Silicon valley is what it is not just
because there is a secret formula which you can use to replicate. I am not
even sure if there are places in other parts of US which are comparable to the
ecosystem here.

These kind of articles probably make for good copy. But without first trying
to understand what makes Silicon Valley unique even in US - they are nothing
but misleading.

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mayanks
India has definitely progressed in the last 5-6 years, but to emulate a
startup ecosystem like the valley takes a lot more time. Fred Wilson had a
good article on this the other day. Valley today is what it is because a lot
of ventures and startups happened around the 70's. India is seeing that kind
of growth only today.

I would say atleast 10 more years before you can have a Techcrunch 50 in India
at the same level as it happens in US

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vgoel
Vivek Wadhwa, like Rafiq Dossani and AnnaLee Saxenian before him, has been
making too many wild extrapolations. Yes, a few start-up type Indian companies
will innovate and progress. A larger number of large established companies are
likely to take on global competitors successfully.

India taking on Silicon Valley? Won't happen for a long, long time. \- An
Indian living in Silicon Valley.

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ivenkys
A very poor article , taking a few outliers and extrapolating that to make it
sound like "India"/Bangalore is the next Silicon Valley is just non-sensical.

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jarnold
Hiring good talent is also a difficult for startups. It's difficult to
convince families that an unknown company with upside potential is a better
bet than a more well-known brand.

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known
Can India take on Silicon Valley as a global R&D hub?

Answer: Not in another 1000 years

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c00p3r
Yes, but only when young and skilled people around the world would travel to
Bangalore, instead of California.

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ujc
i'm indian and this vivek randhawa guy is starting to piss me off. can we just
ban techcrunch on HN?

~~~
vgoel
Don't ban him. Just ignore him or stop taking him seriously.

Banning TechCrunch is a dumber idea.

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nebula
May be in a zillion years.

