Wednesday, June 08, 2005

Tom Friedman on Bangalore


Update: Sorry, there is nothing here in this box! I am just testing if I can get a sidebar within a post!.

From Tom Friedman's NYTimes column, Bangalore: Bot and Hotter (catch it before it goes behind the paywall):

... The infrastructure here is still a total mess. But looks can be deceiving. Beneath the mess, Bangalore is entering a mature new phase as a technology center by starting to produce its own high-tech products, research, venture capital firms and start-ups.

[...]

Even more interesting is how Indian firms are taking the skills they learned from outsourcing and using them to develop low-cost products for the low-wage Indian market: a medical insurance plan for the poor for as little as $10 a year, a $2,000 car, a $200 laptop, supercheap cellphones, a low-fare airline ($75 one-way for the three-hour Bangalore-Delhi flight) that sells tickets from Internet kiosks in gas stations. Indian companies know that if they can make money producing low-cost technology for poor Indians, it gives them an incredible platform to then take these products global. (Imagine the profit potential if they work in the West?) China is doing the exact same thing.

1 Comments:

  1. Anonymous said...

    i'm truly impressed, given the fact that my feeble attempts at modifying code end up in freezing my site:)