Can India’s IT sector compete with Silicon Valley?

India’s IT sector is growing, but will its own version of Silicon Valley be able to match up to its counterpart in the United States?

By Craig Falck for Africa Report
Photograph: © Yuri Arcurs | Dreamstime.com

To answer that question in a simple way, no. As big as India’s economy is and as much as it’s on the increase, it simply cannot match up to what has been built over the last 30-odd years in the southern San Francisco Bay area in America.

All you have to do is look at the list of the US Silicon Valley residents to know that you’re talking about big, big, big money… Adobe Systems, Apple Inc, eBay, Facebook, Google, Hewlett-Packard, Intel, Oracle, SanDisk, Asus, Sony, Sun Microsystems – we’re talking about hundreds of billions of dollars of technology revenue shared by these companies, and they don’t even make up a quarter of the information technology enterprises that call Silicon Valley home. The area has been an IT mecca for decades and it has been through ups and downs over the years, surviving a number of debilitating earthquakes as well as financial declines, and yet it’s still there and doing better than ever.

India’s version of Silicon Valley is situated in the city of Bangalore and has long been touted as a future successor to its American namesake. In late 2006, there was still talk that it would take over as the “new and improved Silicon Valley”, but that has sadly died down. Make no mistake, India is still a major contender when it comes to IT production of both hardware and software, but America has perfected the industry. This is largely due to the fact that everything is “bigger and better” in the country, as well as it being the strongest player in the global economy. When America sneezes, the rest of the world runs with tissues and medication. That’s how strong its influence is.

India has a growing economy and a strong and available workforce, but that simply isn’t good enough to compete with America. Sure, it will be outsourced as production facilities, but China, Japan and a host of other countries are already doing that. For all its positives and strong points, India’s Silicon Valley just cannot compete with its namesake. At least it’s putting up a challenge and spearheading itself towards the top of the industry. America will have taken notice, but all that would have done is made it be more determined to stay on top of the pile, where it’s been all along and where it’s likely to stay for many more years to come.

Silicon Valley has a little brother on the other side of the world, in India. While it hasn’t been able to match up to the US version, it’s done tremendously well and has become the IT hub of the East. The future is full of 0s and 1s if it carries on like this… To binary and beyond!