Yahoo head sees sense in Bangalore

On a sultry Wednesday afternoon, sitting in the plush office of the $130-million Infinite Computer Solutions’ CEO at Bangalore’s International Tech Park

On a sultry Wednesday afternoon, sitting in the plush office of the $130-million Infinite Computer Solutions’ CEO at Bangalore’s International Tech Park, information & communication minister from the Australian state of Victoria Timothy Holding is unfazed by talk of infrastructure woes plaguing the city.

“This is clearly a city that is growing extraordinarily quickly,” he said. “But then, Bangalore must be getting something right. For, the investments here are staggering,” Holding said, pointing to the huge campuses housing global IT giants like SAP and Indian majors like Tata Consultancy Services.

Nearly 20 km away from the Tech Park, in a five-star hotel, Yahoo co-founder David Filo becomes emotional about his company’s Bangalore connections. “I have mixed emotions as I stand here. Initially, when we were looking at basic outsourcing, we came here. We moved from that to engineering services and to development of products for markets globally. Now, we offer services across the board from Bangalore,” the Yahoo chief said. “As we looked at emerging markets and the places where we would put our engineering, we realised that Bangalore made sense.”

“We want to look at Bangalore as a centre of excellence for developing products for the global market. Folks here are going to be working on engineering services for the global markets.” Yahoo has currently 1,000 people working in its R&D section and on Thursday will open another facility with 1,600-seat capacity.