It is destination Bangalore for overseas tech product start-ups

Snap MyLife Inc, a start-up headquartered in Princeton, New Jersey, which provides cloud-based applications, opened its India development centre in February. 

Similarly, in April, BloomReach, a California-based start-up that develops products for Web-based marketing, set up its Bangalore R&D centre. 

It is not just companies from the US, but start-ups from other countries are also flocking to Bangalore due to the wide talent pool available here. 

New Zealand-based Pingar, with offices in Hong Kong, India, the UK and the US, entered India in February in partnership with CMC to develop and implement software products in India and abroad. A couple of years ago, top IT companies like Infosys and others started to move into tier-2 cities like Thiruvananthapuram. But for product start-ups, Bangalore is the big draw. 

Good quality engineers

“Despite high commercial real estate, we see good quality technical engineers for developing products like ours in Bangalore,” said Mr Jiren Parikh, President and CEO of Snap MyLife. 

According to analysts and industry watchers, what has changed now is the increased maturity and the perception of building products that create higher value. “Career paths in product companies add a lot of value and engineering graduates are starting to realise that,” said Mr Reji Baby, Vice-President, Engineering, Snap MyLife India. 

Others share a similar point of view. “People migrate to different companies since they don't get to build products, and Bangalore has a wide talent pool to choose from. Also, opportunities in areas like cloud and mobility are making employees consider product companies,” said Mr Vinodh Kumar, Global Director of Engineering and Head of BloomReach India. BloomReach India, a three-year-old company was started by ex-Google employees. 

Snap MyLife currently employs 35 product engineers and, according to company executives, will triple the number in the next few months. Pingar India plans to increase its staff strength in Bangalore from 13 to 35 over the next few months. “These positions will be focused largely on new business development and technical engineering support,” said Mr Peter Wren-Hilton, CEO, Pingar. 

BloomReach, which has about 80 employees in the US, said it plans to hire aggressively in India.