6 October 2011 | Daisy Carrington
BBC Radio 4
Sunday, 21 August, 9.30 p.m.
★ ★ ★ ★
Presenter Peter Day visited Bangalore in 1994, at the precipice of India’s technology boom. Though the fastest growing city in India, what he found was a handful of brave entrepreneurs, trying to launch tech and bio companies despite undeveloped infrastructure as well as a reluctant international audience.
In this show, Day revisited Bangalore 16 years after his initial journey. Rather than meekly seeking acceptance from the international market, he found Indian businesses are now leading the way. The programme was filled not just with Day’s own recollections, but with rags-to-riches stories from Indian industry leaders. They recall the methods they used to overcome the odds, and discussed not only the future of the technology industry, but that of the Indian economy as well.
Listening to one business person after another discuss how their company went from a £100,000 bottom line to one worth several billion, it was impossible to not somehow feel compelled to get in on the action. By the programme’s end, the exhortation to “go East” never felt more accurate.
