Bangalore among the top 10 preferred entrepreneurial locations in the world

Silicon Valley, New York City and London are still the preferred locations for entrepreneurs to start up companies, but Bangalore is also now among the top 10 such preferred entrepreneurial locations worldwide.

While Bangalore managed to land at ninth place in the list of best cities for startups, India's financial capital Mumbai was slotted at 20.

The Startup Genome Project was started a year ago to study how entrepreneurs decide where to start their company. Started by a handful of serial entrepreneurs and startup mentors based in Silicon Valley, the project made an effort to scientifically study the startup ecosystems in different cities across the world.

While Silicon Valley had a strong early stage funding ecosystem, more mentors, ambitious and risky startups, New York City had diversity, niche focus apart from marketplace and social network focus. London startups were focused on project management and e-commerce as well as highly-educated ecosystem which bets big on perceived proven winners.

The report also offers insights on the three startup ecosystems. For instance, companies in Silicon Valley work 35% more than companies in New York City. In Silicon Valley, teams at startups work nine-and-half hours a day on average versus eight hours in London and seven in New York City.

The report, which is still a work-inprogress, has limited information on Indian cities as it was mostly the result of analysis of data received by the project from nearly 13,000 startups that used Startup Compass, a benchmarking tool launched by the Startup Genome Project.

Bangalore-based serial entrepreneur Sharad Sharma says Indian entrepreneurship gets under-reported as it is still focused on serving businesses. "The Startup Compass methodology puts a premium on velocity in achieving scale. This tends to happen slower in business-to-business startups than business-to-consumer startups."

Sharma, also a entrepreneur-in-residence and venture capital fund Canaan Venture Partners, predicted that angel funding deals will double in 2012 compared to 2011. "Ecosystems in Bangalore, NCR and Mumbai-Pune are rapidly evolving," he said while pointing out that besides startups like Flipkart, Bangalorebased startups like Hashcube and Unbxd are doing well globally.

According to a recent Ernst & Young report, 2010 saw 68 deals worth 299 take place in the early stage while 2011 saw 145 deals estimated at $ 1.2 bn. Last year was the blockbuster year for private equity and venture capital investments in India. As India begins to see its share of action some have even starte

The moving back to the country to start up companies.

"The energy in Bangalore today is comparable to the valley of 1996," says Indus Khaitan, who moved to Bangalore in 2008 after a long stint in Silicon Valley. India, he cautions, is bypassing the incubation period and jumping right into big money investments, which may lead to premature exits and burnouts.