Tarun Dua

The ecosystem for startups in Pune seems to be getting hotter. I met yet another entrepreneur who returned from the Valley to prototype a new product before pitching to the VCs. Some of my friends who are into angel investing and incubation now believe that, it is possible for Pune to become the Silicon Valley of India rather than Bangalore and all the land between Mumbai and Pune will turn into gold.

Why Pune?
1. Chilled out city with not much prudishness or bigotry. Most people are not fussy and have a let live attitude towards everyone else.
2. Its not set in outsourcing culture like Bangalore and there are a lot of freshers who might be willing to look at startup culture of ESOPs and product development instead of spending years working under managers at Outsourcing companies.
3. Presence of valley returnees and angels who seem to think Pune is a good place to hangout and figure out the right direction in good time as the cost of thinking and doing nothing in India is too low.
4. Osho Ashram: it brings in a fair share of foreigners to this place and the easy going life style of coffee shops and eateries encouraging hanging out a la California Ave in Palo Alto exists right here at Koregaon Park between Lane 1 to Lane 6.
5. Many funded startups or their major development centers exist in Pune now creating a kind of support system for entrepreneurs and easy presence of bouncing boards for ideas.This also means that VCs have a kind of familiarity with the Entrepreneurs/Engineers of Pune.
6. Temperate weather more or less throughout the year just like Bangalore.
7. IT parks and like facilities and a very cooperative and in-corruptible STPI(Software Technology Parks of India) with single window clearance facilities. Yes this is not unique to Pune alone but it helps.
8. Metro Ethernet and Wifi projects are being experimented by many telcos in Pune, which raises the possibility of Pune becoming the best in the country for Internet infrastructure.
9. Nearness to Mumbai the financial capital of the country without the high rents and high costs associated with it.
10. Presence of more than a 100 colleges throughout the city giving it a university town like feel. None of them is an elite insititution of the class of IITs/NITs but some of them have made their mark.

Update: circa, 2008 The live and let live attitude is now tempered with the rise of sons of soil politicians trying to pit Marathi pride against the outsider ( North Indians like yours truly ). Pune is off my list of cities to live or do a startup.