Rodin In
Cubbon Park
By Harish
Bijoor
I live in Bangalore. I love
Bangalore. But that’s not why I am saying what I am going to say right now.
I do believe, if New Delhi is the
political capital of India, Mumbai the commercial and Kolkata the ‘kultural’,
Bangalore is indeed the Intellectual capital of India. We are a city of ideas. A city of
thinking people who think the past with equal aplomb as we think the present
and the future.
While most cities today are very
besotted with the present, we straddle every aspect of the past, present and
the future, in our own true-blue Bangalorean way. Never mind the fact that we
live treadmill lives, like everyone in the bog cities does, but we get off at times
as well. And that’s the time we think. And sometimes act.
Bangalore today is all of 87 lakh
people living cheek to jowl with people from 25 different Indian states and
some 39 nationalities that have made Bangalore India’s biggest expatriate
island. Bangalore is therefore a true-blue amalgam city of sorts. We are the
melting pot city in India, if there ever is to be one, where different
cultures, tastes, and most importantly ideas mix, rub shoulders and blend. This
then is an ideas-laboratory of sorts. A place where new things are thought out.
A few ideas flourish and most die of course. In many ways an idea is a sperm.
It lives like one and dies like one as well. Very few germinate.
Bangalore today is really an
ideas city. It has been one for a while now. Only thing is we have not noticed
enough of it, and not made enough of it as well. This is an innovative city.
Innovative at every level. A city of entrepreneurs as well. A lot of credit for
this entrepreneurship streak needs to be given to the lakhs of new settlers we
have welcomed into this city from every part of India and the world at large.
Let’s first credit every land
entrepreneur who came in from Andhra and indeed the immediate neighboring
states around us. Lets credit every retailer, whether it be in the space of
grocery ‘kirana’ or gold retail, many of whom came in from Kerala and again our
very immediate neighbor states. I can go on listing out terrains that cover
technology, ITES, IT-end to end services, Biotech, manufacturing, pharma and
literally every other idea vertical that has made this city what it is. A city
of ideas. A city that has encouraged idea start-ups from the realm of the
humble Momo-cart to high end embedded systems that run nations and their many
programs.
The basic DNA of this city, from
the bottom end of the corner 'kirana' grocer to the top-end of the IT-preneur
is a city that is led and bled by ideas.
Look around, and it is not difficult to spot an ‘ideapreneur’ on the
prowl. This guy has been welcomed into the fold of this very accommodative
city. Never mind where you are from, all are welcome. There is no jingoism
here. If your idea is good, you will survive here. And thrive.
The ideas that run here are both
small and big. Decades ago we started with Pub-entrepreneurships. The theme pub
started in Bangalore really. A space pub called NASA, a car pub called Black Cadillac,
and 485 other variants happened here. The food revolution is a reality in
Bangalore today. Every food-entrepreneurship is an idea whose time has come.
Koramangala today boasts of the highest density of restaurants per square
kilometer in India for sure, with its 458 offerings. The Café started in
Bangalore with VG Siddhartha’s Café Coffee Day, and now we have 2950 of them
belonging to a myriad set of brands all over India. The IT end-to-end services
enterprises happened here and sprouted, just as did the BPO outfits that litter
our lives, From bottom end to top-end, this is surely an ideas city.
One downside though. The idea
sperms are many, but few meet and mate the money that is needed to ramp up the
humble idea. One wonders where the moneybags are burying their moneys. Let’s
dig.
In a way, if I were to look for
an image icon that would represent Bangalore for what it is, it would not be
the Vidhana Soudha, which we use so profusely. Neither would it be the visual
of the “Namma Metro”.
Instead, I would land up right in
Paris, run into the Musee Rodin and fly out Auguste Rodin’s “The Thinker” and
plant it out here right outside Cubbon Park! Sorry Parisians! This is the
spanking new thinking city of the spanking new world. Bangalore!
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Harish Bijoor is a Brand-strategy specialist & CEO, Harish Bijoor
Consults Inc.
Twitter @harishbijoor
Email: harishbijoor@hotmail.com
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