Bangalore

“For instance, you know Dunzo, where I was the first investor you know, when I funded them, they were basically a WhatsApp. They were using WhatsApp to help people in Bangalore kind of get things around them, right? And now today, when you look at it, it's beco…”

“Many people come to Bangalore and they don't bother to learn Kannada because they don't need to. Ah, that's both the strength and the weakness of the city in some ways because, you know, it's, it is, you know, everybody feels at home as soon as they walk in. B…”

“They already have 22 stores in Bangalore. I would say they've achieved product market fit.”

“She ended up, you know, creating an organization that serves the needs of 15,000 sex workers in Bangalore. She runs a small bank that provides loans for the needy sex workers in Bangalore who are part of her organization. She ensures that they are well taken c…”

“So in Mumbai and Bangalore, I think we were there for almost two years before we expanded to more cities and then we slowly expanded to four or five cities more, but it was very gradual and very thought after.”

“NoBroker basically had was in was in two cities, Bombay and Bangalore. And I think the number of listings would be barely thousand in a month, thousand, 1500 in the months, in the month.”

“They are, as of today, they are yet to install, they are, they have some test boxes installed, but in the next one month, they are going to install 2500 boxes across Bangalore.”

“In person is always way better than doing, like, Zoom calls. It works. Zoom also works. I've been doing it for the last two years, but I think this will accelerate your learning for the audience if they want to come here and accelerate their growth in their ca…”

“So you can travel to the city that has the most opportunities, work over here in the initial part of your career, hustle, and then you can decide wherever you want to go. You can work remotely later on.”

“Today, when I tap into my friends in Valley, San Francisco, I'll tell you, Bangalore is at least, 50 times to 75 times ahead in the race, in terms of understanding the spec, the framework, the other things are happening around the protocols and other things, r…”

“On core real estate side, in cities like Bangalore, maybe we have 20, 25% market share, but we want to increase it to 60, 70%.”

“So if you see the houses, the flats, near to the hubs of IIT, the prices have gone up drastically. To give you the number, it has gone up by anywhere between 40% to 80%.”

“Bangalore is, is the highest amount of absorption in terms of real estate globally in the last like few years.”

“Like, the more investors who take crazy bets of defining the future, the more India will be able to solve world problems. See, if you want to be a global technology destination, right, if you want Bangalore to replace SFO or Palo Alto is Palo Alto, SFO is SFO,…”

“Bangalore has 2.3 million software people and technology people, largest in the world, more than Silicon Valley.”

“Bangalore is 10 years beyond infrastructure. We don't have the infrastructure to make us productive.”

“End of the day, when you buy a cab, What is left after paying EMIs at the end of this one, but after five years if you pay, the cab if you sell, whatever money makes, that's what is the money he makes.”

“So the battery volume, if you look at it. So the Bangalore is around 50. And Bangalore is a Bangalore. Chennai is around 15. And then, ah, if you look at, you know, Hyderabad around 20. Mumbai that around 20, 25. And, ah, Delhi. We're almost there in 10.”

“We are factory only in five places, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Mumbai, Delhi, and Dubai.”

“And all the network effects that Silicon Valley has been seeing for 30 plus years or 40 plus years. The network effects I think are beginning to happen here and yeah, a hundred percent agree.”

“The other part is our portfolio companies are majorly moving their engineering teams to India, as I mentioned. Large number in Bangalore, increasingly large number in Hyderabad, Chennai, and we see Pune as a hub that's growing very rapidly, and maybe someday G…”

“The Bangalore explosion didn't happen in one generation, right? Even when we were in college, I remember Texas Instruments built a major development center here, right? Cisco built a major development system. Analog Devices built a major development center in …”

“During my time at Yahoo and LinkedIn, I had fairly large teams sitting in Bangalore and a few, few in Hyderabad. And this was my, the team's reporting that was during 2006 to 2014. And at that time, Google was coming in in a big way. Facebook came a bit later.…”

“I think once while we were on that journey, that incubator journey we got our first check of 50 lakh rupees.”

“For Covey employees, I'm pretty sure the work life is pretty identical. They won't miss out, like Not only just the nice to have things like office and those kind of things, even work wise, we do cutting edge thing and we constantly focus on whether we are doi…”

“I think it will, I feel it's eventually slowed down because people, everybody, now they understand what are the challenges of moving some to Bangalore. The quality of life, definitely it's suffered for everybody, right?”

“In India, if I think, you know when I, if somebody gives me a choice, you have exactly same career prospects, and what you can do in one place versus the other, and you, whether you want to take Bangalore or Coimbatore, I will take Coimbatore at current moment…”

“We were previously designing for a 60 millimeter per hour intensity rainfall. Now, rainfall intensities for short bursts of time are recorded at 2:40 millimeters an hour. One 80 millimeter per hour is the norm. So you're getting a large volume of water in a ve…”

“Previously, when it used to rain, there used to be enough absorption capacity in the city where water would percolate into the soil, into the ground. Now we are paved so much. So the runoff has increased from what used to be 15% to 95%.”

“So we have eight months of rain, 63 days of rain, nine 70 millimeters of rain, all that because we are at this altitude which geology gave us. But when geology pushes you up, it also pushes you away from the river. So therefore every drop of water that we need…”

“Here, the volcanic action resulted in the plateau coming up to nine 20 meters above sea level, where you can go to Lal Bagh and see the rocks, which are three thousand six hundred million years old. One of the oldest rocks in India is in Bangalore.”

“In Bangalore, we've said, it's good for you. Please do it. Otherwise, we'll give you a 25% increase in the water bill. Now that water bill is so ridiculously low that 25% doesn't make a difference. Six months later, we'll increase it by 50%. People are willing…”

“We are willing to pay five rupees for 20 liters hour of water. We are willing to pay 110 rupees to the tanker wall or sometimes 150 rupees a kiloliter to the tanker wall.”

“However, Bangalore only takes 6.66% of Karnatka's allocation of Cauvery waters, and supports roughly 50% of Karnatka's population in the Cauvery basin. It also generates 70% of the GDP of the state.”

“What we now have are about 210 tanks in Bangalore. We must have lost about 800 tanks and lakes.”

“There are more than 500 families to a thousand families who are digging recharge wells all across and making a livelihood out of it and helping the city become water secure.”

“So we, the Devanali project I was talking about is the first project in India where treated wastewater from Bangalore is becoming drinking water for Devanali town.”

“And when all the projects are done, when all the treated wastewater will go to these surrounding districts, it will be the world's second largest project of its kind, next only to that of Mexico City.”

“And one would argue that perhaps the local Kannada speakers are in a minority.”

“If citizens in Bangalore pay 95 rupees a kiloliter, a current price. ... A thousand liters. 95 rupees, if I say a thousand liters, we will be able to get the true cost of water and the ecological cost of water and no damage to the environment.”

“Just to give you an example, the Bangalore Water Supply and Storage Board does not have a single hydrogeologist. The city has 500,000 bore wells at least. It pumps out six hundred million liters per day. But the institution does not have a single hydrogeologis…”

“So therefore floods will be the norm as things go along, unless every house, every residence becomes responsible for what we have now designed as a policy for Bangalore for 60 millimeters of rainfall, saying that for every square meter of roof area, 60 millime…”

“But if you are forced to hire only locals and a significant percentage of them, then you're going to limit the number of people that you can attract, and that will impact the attractiveness of Karnataka and Bangalore in particular as a place for doing business…”

“Bangalore will have more than, right? You know, the entire Taiwan put together, right? Or Chennai, for example, right? You know, they have so many engineering colleges and all that.”

“Bangalore would have, you know, thousand people who can put a hundred crore each, right? And, you know, they won't even know that they've taken a hundred crore out of the bank, right?”

“I would think of building startups which kind of follow startups which are companies which have been very successful and kind of replicate those business models in the ecosystem which I work in so that I can be capital efficient without having to, with a high …”

“Your worker in Bangalore will be satisfied with X amount of money, which the worker in America will require five or 10 X. 10 X, at least.”

“Maybe in a decade, maybe in two, I think Bangalore is an interesting ecosystem. I think in a decade or two, I think Bangalore, you know, has a shot at being there.”

“I had only a hundred rupees in my hand.”

“When people were selling 15 rupees, 16 rupees better, our price was 20 rupees. When we started with 20 every day.”

“Out of the seven 30 employees, about a 130 have spent more than 10 years with us, right? So it's like, if you compare that to Bangalore, you know, I think we are like five X better in terms of retention. Our monthly churn is one percent. One percent of our tea…”

“So, I mean, at least the Bangalore ecosystem is far deeper and richer than Paris.”

“Like whether a kid is moving from you know, New Jersey or Georgia or Bangalore, I mean, they have the scale skill set and they are coming here with the same network. So from that perspective, I don't think founders are at a disadvantage of any kind.”