Bangalore: India's Silicon Valley, a city straining under pressure • FRANCE 24 English

Added: 2026-05-15

[00:00:00]When people think of Bangalore or Bengaluru as it's been known for over a decade, they tend to refer to it as India's Silicon Valley. The city of nearly 15 million people has undergone a huge transformation since the late 1980s, attracted by a pool of English-speaking talent and low labor costs. A series of multinational IT companies have set up shop there. But the city is also home to numerous startups. It's no longer content to merely outsource. It is also innovating particularly in the field of AI. Well, Bengaluru is today home to 31 of the 32 data centers built in India. But that means with huge pressure on water resources right as the city was already struggling. The rapid growth is placing a heavy strain on infrastructure.

[00:00:47]Offices and housing have been built on every available plot of land. And with every monsoon, part of the city ends up flooded because the rainwater has nowhere to drain away. So will India's Silicon Valley be able to withstand this intense pressure? Hensson Yuned and Albert Alvarez revisit Bangalore for France 24.

[00:01:14]Over 7,000 kilometers away from Paris, Ashman Yadi heads Cap Gemini's India operations, one of the country's largest IT employers.

[00:01:31]In the early 2000s, this French multinational was among the first to establish itself in the South Indian city of Bangaluru, more commonly known as Bangalore. They started by offering business process outsourcing services known as BPOS.

[00:01:48]>> What you see here is uh a typical relatively slightly old uh BPO IT floor.

[00:01:54]So this is where we deliver for one of our global clients both IT and BPO operations.

[00:02:01]>> Capgeemini placed an early bet on Bangalore's booming IT industry.

[00:02:05]>> Lot of global clients had cost pressures. So what companies started doing is seeing what part of the operations could be standardized uh and then be offshored areas like customer service including uh servicing global English speaking countries you know if if you have a product issue and you're calling a help line that help line actually got diverted to India.

[00:02:34]Ashwin was amongst the first few employees to be hired from a single office to now 16 across India. He has seen both the city and the company grow together.

[00:02:45]>> As you can see large desktops, okay? No, nobody knows about desktops now, right?

[00:02:51]Everybody works on laptops. What you see here is actually when we comped a milestone of 1,000 talent had come.

[00:03:02]26 years later, Capgeemini employs more than 200,000 people in India. Once known as the outsourcing backroom of western companies, Bangalore is now a hub of innovation where firms like Cap Gemini are building technology of their own.

[00:03:19]They have built a system which uses artificial intelligence to monitor and reduce energy consumption across its offices worldwide.

[00:03:28]>> It's it's something which you would have never imagined. Okay. First 25 years ago we nobody was talking about sustainability.

[00:03:36]The level of maturity and innovation wasn't there. So all of this has come over the last few years. We actually built it in Bangalore and now we are doing it for the group and for our clients.

[00:03:52]Following economic liberalization in the 1990s, domestic and foreign capital Poden shifting the city from an agriculture and manufacturing base into an IT powerhouse.

[00:04:05]Known by the moniker of the Silicon Valley of India, Bangalore has now become a sprawling metropolis of nearly 15 million people. It is home to over 16,000 startups and generates a third of India's IT exports. Its thriving tech industry is now drawing a new wave of entrepreneurs back home.

[00:04:26]>> We can start getting it all ready for shipment. I think this I want to see a little bit more of a demo before we ship it out.

[00:04:32]>> How does it feel? Does it feel easy to to rotate and the the hand control?

[00:04:37]>> Prrenaf Caneria returned to Bangalore from the US in 2017. Alongside his childhood friend Abhishek Gupta, he founded Flux Auto, >> a startup building AI powered software for autonomous vehicles in industrial environments.

[00:04:51]>> Here, you can see this is a LAR sensor right here. Uh, this is what helps the robot see where it is, understand the environment. And inside here, we have compute systems. So, all of our decision-m happens on the edge. So, we don't use the cloud to make our decisions. So this allows us to operate in in environments in areas where network connectivity is spotty like warehouses, factories, farms, mines, any of these other environments.

[00:05:13]>> From this garageike setup, a 50 member team develops computer vision systems, maps, and software designed to improve efficiency and reduce human exposure in hazardous workplaces.

[00:05:26]5 m might not be enough. No, >> realistically speaking, if you're going to collide with something, it'll be within 5 m radius, right?

[00:05:34]With over 1,000 colleges, the highest in India, Bangalore offers a vast English-speaking talent pool, making it easier for startups to recruit skilled professionals.

[00:05:44]>> There's an energy here that's really infectious. You become a part of a community. Um, there are enough good employees, there are enough good infrastructure. Uh, there's enough events happening. I think all of that matters and it sort of snowballs. Uh, it's sort of similar to how we experience like when we go to a place like San Francisco where everyone is building there. uh you're either an employee at a startup or you're building your own startup. That's what we feel in Bangalore as well.

[00:06:09]>> Bangalore startup boom continues to attract young founders from across India all hoping to try their luck. Among them is 26-year-old Ankit Kumar. He left a stable job as a software engineer to build his own venture. His application is designed to check whether AI systems used by banks and financial institutions comply with regulations.

[00:06:34]>> Here you can see what the AI agent did right, what it passed and what it failed. If we can show banks exactly where their AI is performing well and where it isn't, it becomes very beneficial for them. That's essentially what our product does.

[00:06:49]For Ankit, the biggest challenge of funding and access to mentorship remains. To navigate them, he's attending a pitch circuit, an event where young founders connect with mentors and seek initial investment.

[00:07:04]>> I feel a mix of nervousness and excitement. Nervous because this could be a big decision if I get investment, but also excited because I get to pitch my idea.

[00:07:15]The city hosts hundreds of such startup events every year, bringing together founders and aspiring entrepreneurs.

[00:07:23]Tonight, seven candidates selected from more than 400 applicants will pitch their ideas before a packed audience and panel of judges. Ankit is one of them.

[00:07:33]>> KYC has to be done.

[00:07:34]>> We are trying to raise 3 million seed.

[00:07:36]It's a requirement as many have said that we should not raise very early but the sales cycle itself takes 6 to 8 months for the finance sectors.

[00:07:46]>> After the pitches the jury will decide which ideas are compelling enough to invest.

[00:07:52]>> You were very busy with moving the presentation forward. Presentation is not important.

[00:07:56]>> Uh but the true idea of your company probably did not come out of that.

[00:08:01]For Ankit and other young founders, events like this are where the company first takes shape. Among the mentors is Shubhham Jurya, co-founder of a venture capital firm that has raised a $12 million fund to back early stage startups. For him, the city offers endless opportunities, but feels competition means only a few succeed.

[00:08:24]>> It's very very tough to start a company, to raise capital, to get customers in whichever order you want to do it.

[00:08:30]Especially in a place like India wherein I think we saw a pitch event today. I mean there were maybe out of seven companies maybe three of them were doing something very very similar. If you're in particularly a city like Bangalore it's very often that you see founders who potentially don't know why they're building a company but when they look left when they look right they they always see people who are building around them.

[00:08:47]>> Demotivate.

[00:08:49]>> My next step is to pitch at more places.

[00:08:51]There's no point getting demotivated.

[00:08:53]I'll keep improving my pitch. I've received validation for my product.

[00:08:57]We'll focus on the improvements required on what to highlight and what not to.

[00:09:01]I'll implement all of that going forward.

[00:09:07]In just 25 years, Bangalore has become a major tech hub. Now, India's Silicon Valley does not want to miss the next revolution of artificial intelligence.

[00:09:18]The government aims to attract $200 billion in AI investments by 2028.

[00:09:24]But this could drastically impact a job market already struggling with unemployment. A think tank estimates that up to 2 million job could be lost by 2031.

[00:09:36]Himmanu is among those already affected.

[00:09:39]He joined as a developer at a startup but a year later he was laid off.

[00:09:46]I received an email from the CEO saying that since the company is integrating AI and moving towards becoming an AI first company, they may not need as many people. I was stunned. I had given so much time and was dedicated to the company.

[00:10:03]Each day he sends out around 40 job applications and spends 5 to 6 hours taking online AI courses.

[00:10:11]openings.

[00:10:12]>> Every job opening I plan to apply for requires AI and Gen AI skills. Hence, I'm working on learning these skills so I can apply to more companies and can easily get hired.

[00:10:27]>> After moving over 2,000 kilometers from Bihar to Bangalore for work, losing his job has left Himanchu struggling to survive in one of India's most expensive cities. In the hope to land a job, he now attends free upskilling workshops.

[00:10:45]>> As we know, because of AI, work is happening much faster. Tasks that earlier took 10 days can now be completed in just one day. My question remains, if one AI is performing the work of 10 people, why would a company need 10 people? This would result in a decrease in employment.

[00:11:06]I >> over the years Bangalore's rise as India's Silicon Valley has come at a cost. Rapid and unplanned urban growth has placed enormous pressure on the city's water bodies. In the last 30 years, activist Anan Maligawad has witnessed the city's transformation and its impact on the environment.

[00:11:31]>> Look at the condition of this lake. It's full of solid waste. Trash, sludge, and water is fully contaminated. For the last 50 years, this precious drinking water has been used for bathing, washing clothes, cleaning pets, hotels, service centers, and nearby factories. All of them have discharged their waste here freely. Drinking water.

[00:11:52]>> Today, more than 200 lakes in Bangalore remain polluted. The city also faces a daily water deficit of nearly 500 million L. The government supply network meets only a fraction of the demand, forcing millions of its residents to depend on expensive private water tankers like these.

[00:12:12]>> We connect the pipe from the tanker to here. Then from here, we discharge 12,000 L of water to the various 1,800 apartments, which has a population of between 3 to 4,000 people. Look, this practice of purchasing water is becoming increasingly expensive and difficult for people to afford. Together we pay around $30 to $50,000 per month in water bills for this whole process of tankers fetching from the bore well and then to us >> across the city. Every hour dozens of such tankers pass through the streets.

[00:12:45]Anan says the water crisis has become a big business with many illegally digging bows to extract groundwater.

[00:12:53]>> The government does not allow digging of bore wells without proper permission especially not next to the lakes. But look, we can see 1 2 3 four operating here. Nobody listens.

[00:13:04]>> The consequences of excessive digging are now visible. Earlier, water from this lake was supplied to nearby households. Now, only 10% of it remains.

[00:13:16]>> Look at this scale. 20 to 30 years ago, the water level was 15 ft and now it came down to just 5t.

[00:13:28]around the periphery. Out of 200 150 lakes are fully dried out.

[00:13:32]>> 200 lakes a 150 lakes full dry.

[00:13:36]>> As Bangalore continues to expand, lakes and wetlands that once absorbed rainwater have been encroached and replaced by concrete and new infrastructure.

[00:13:47]>> Lakeland.

[00:13:49]>> So lake land, water bodies, grazing land, they grabbed it all.

[00:13:54]Firstly to build various residential buildings like high-rise apartments, villas. Secondly for industries, factories and thirdly for tech parks. Fourthly for small business sectors like hotels and retail shops. All of them build on the lake beds.

[00:14:15]Big data centers are coming in and I am not against them as an environmentalist.

[00:14:19]We do need development, >> economy, industries, employment. But where are the resources for that? You need a million liters of water for the data center.

[00:14:31]>> Known as the late man of India, Anand set himself an ambitious goal to revive the city's lakes one by one. In 2017, this is the first lake he helped restore in just 45 days. Birds have returned.

[00:14:47]Groundwater levels have improved and even during peak summer water remains.

[00:14:55]>> Look, Bangalore has not yet reached saturation point.

[00:15:00]We have not crossed the retrieval period.

[00:15:03]We still have time to recover.

[00:15:07]We can save Bangalore in the coming 10 years.

[00:15:12]As Bangalore builds the technologies of tomorrow, environmentalists warn that India's Silicon Valley can only thrive if innovation is balanced with protecting the ecosystem that sustains the city.