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Pune, India - The arrival of a global R&D hub?
Section Investment Pune Posted on Sun Jan 14, 2007 at 07:20:02 AM EST
The city of Pune in western India was once a sleepy retirees' paradise, known mainly for controversial New Age gurus. Outsourcing and technology innovation are now transforming this city, with research labs, new ventures and larger companies creating a compelling R&D and innovation ecosystem in Pune.
A major driver of the city's growth has been outsourcing. With creaking infrastructure, climbing employee attrition and high costs of living in current hotspots such as Bangalore and Mumbai, second tier cities like Pune are emerging as favoured BPO destinations. But what makes Pune stand out among these up-and-coming hubs is its potential beyond BPO. The city is emerging as an R&D hotspot in India, especially in the IT, engineering and biotechnology sectors.
Driving this trend are a strong technology and product culture, reputed educational and research institutions, and geographic proximity to India's financial capital Mumbai. Historically home to a strong culture of technology innovation, the city is now growing its IT and biotechnology sectors. Besides pursuing research in computing, chemicals, fuel cells, biosciences, bioinformatics and genomics, the local university, tertiary colleges and research labs supply talent to the tune of 80,000 engineering graduates each year. They also encourage innovation in the city's students, via yearly exhibitions of technology products, and public-private sector collaborations in PhD programmes.
Political support for this ecosystem has come via funding, infrastructure development and fiscal incentives from the state of Maharashtra. The majority of research institutions in Pune are publicly funded. To encourage commercialisation of R&D, the government has set up six IT and biotech parks, and plans to build more. Public and private incubators are pitching in with early-stage infrastructure, funding and intellectual property-related support for the city's new ventures.
Like any upcoming Asian hotspot, Pune faces challenges. As it stands, poor infrastructure is particularly capable of choking the city's growth -- in a 2004 report, Gartner ranked Pune lowest in infrastructure support among five emerging hubs. The state government's efforts to promote the local language, Marathi, are also a cause for concern, and could easily erode Pune's English proficiency. But if the government learns from the Bangalore experience, and helps grow the right ecosystem to enable further innovation, Pune could start to pose stiff competition to some of the more famous Indian cities as an R&D and technology innovation hub.
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