From Detroit of .. to the Silicon Valley of India
I just wrote a post in the afternoon, calling Chennai – The Detroit of India. Now, I say Chennai is the Silicon Valley of India. You already think I’m confused. No. Chennai is indeed both. And many more. The city is becoming multi-faceted by the day and the good thing is we are witnessing growth across all segments.
As far as IT & ITES goes we are up there. TCS employs around 10,000 in the city. CTS a similar number. Infosys is ramping up operations. So is Wipro and the likes. Standard Chartered, HP, ABN Amro, World Bank, Citibank, HDFC, Ford all have their Global Processing Centres out of Chennai. Nokia is in. So is Flextronics. So is Motorola. Texas Instruments is on the way.
The communication infrastructure in the city is the best in the country. The Bharti-Singtel submarine cable can carry 8.4 tera bits per second is the second largest in the world and it connects Chennai and Singapore. An almost equally powerful one is being commissioned by VSNL again landing in Chennai. The city’s vast pool of English speaking and skilled manpower is rated high on qualification, capabilities, quality of work and work ethics. Companies end up saving up to 60% and the MERCER human resource suvey put Chennai’s cost of living amongst the lowest. Chennai exported US $ 2.310 Billion of software in 2004-05 only to grow by 40% or more the next year.
With a proactive Government in the state coupled with what i call ‘The Maran Effect’, Chennai will displace all the other cities not just in India, but the world very soon.
Hi Can you please post your blog on http://www.IndianStudentsNetwork.com
A bit too far, don’t you think Vinod, the one about displacing every other city in the world?
Chandru, you could call that a bit too far or you could call me an optimist…
ISN
I can’t do that… if you want you can have a link to our blog from your site…
We have to stop calling ourselves this way (India’s silicon valley, India’s Detroit). We have to be unique and better that them. Learn from their success and failures. We are not learning from their mistakes. We are making the same mistakes they made 20, 30 years ago. We have to seriously look into the price of development on the environment.
We have to look into green technologies.
-Karthek
I thought I was the only person to love Chennai on this earth and now I got company. Thanx Vinod for your info. Yes! inspite of all the achievements that CHENNAI ( my paradise on earth)made,CHENNAI was always under-estimated and bullied by not only North-Indian Media but also by many tamizh(yes! it is tamizh and not tamil) movies.
Speaking about North Indian Media,one news channel cllaed CNN IBN showed CHENNAI at wrong location at their Weather Map for 2 long weeks and then I mailed it to correct the location. Seems that Delhiwalas don’t know INDIA ( or do they care about India?) map correctly and they are working for CNN IBN , giving bad reputation to CNN.
Anyway northies consider only BOMBAY, CALCUTTA and NEW DELHI as part of India. Rest of the part are always taken for granted.
This is not a hate message , but the fact.
Northies only praise a place / a state where they can dominate and the recent inclusives are
BANGALORE and HYDERABAD. (I’m glad that they (northies)couldn’t dominate chennai)
Anyway! I’m proud to be MADRASI! I love CHENNAI