Bengaluru struggles to remain in top 20 start-up ecosystems

Bengaluru has fallen five positions to become the last among the top 20 startup ecosystems of 2017, according to the latest rankings by Startup Genome, a startup data analytics company.While SIlicon Valley and New York city retained their top two positions, the list also featured new cities like Beijing and Shanghai, which were excluded from the 2015 report.

India’s startup capital did well in the category of `startup value’ with a rank of 10. Its ecosystem was valued at $19 billion -$3 billion higher than the global average. But Bengaluru fared low in terms of exit value, and was at the 19th position in this category. The report said this either indicated the city’s ecosystem was still young and would mature or there was trouble in the market for acquisitions.

“Exits are tough in the Indian ecosystem only when they are incorrectly evaluated. A lot of times we have seen Indian companies make projections similar to their Silicon Valley peers without actually having the penchant to create global brands like the Silicon Valley companies do,” said Kanwalijit Singh, founder and CEO of gaming company, Gaussian Networks, in the report.

Bengaluru also struggled with challenges like access to talent and quality of talent. “Engineers haven’t been hired quickly, experience is average…,” the report said. But the city was right at the top for being the most cost-efficient in hiring. It had the third lowest annual salary, of $8,600, for an engineer -the global average was $49,000.

Source: Times of India