In defense of Bengaluru: A startup leader by a mile
Despite its numerous problems, the startup capital beats other cities when it comes to funding and in terms of unicorns and soonicorns, Malini Goyal, cofounder & CEO UnboxingBLR Foundation, and co-author of Unboxing Bengaluru—The City of New Beginnings, writes
The recent Global Tech Talent Guidebook 2025 by CBRE says Bengaluru has the largest tech talent market in the Asia-Pacific.
Illustration: Chaitanya Dinesh Surpur
From creaky infrastructure to a near-absence of city-planning, Bengaluru has many problems. Yet, year after year, Bengaluru remains India’s startup capital. Zepto, which decided to shift its headquarters from Mumbai to Bengaluru in 2024, is only the latest in a long list of startups and founders—ranging from Cred’s Kunal Shah to Ola’s Bhavish Aggarwal—who shifted base to Bengaluru.
Related stories
Facts and figures offer some insights. Reports say that many more startups were founded in Delhi during 2014-23 than Bengaluru—21,274 in the former compared to 14,071 in the latter—but on the critical parameter of funding, Bengaluru is the leader by a mile (see graphic). Bengaluru also leads in terms of the unicorns and soonicorns, followed by Delhi-NCR and Greater Mumbai. Based on the number of job listings on LinkedIn, in the top-end future-relevant technologies, such as artificial intelligence (AI), natural language processing, robotics, block chain, cybersecurity and quantum computing, Bengaluru leads across all categories. Ditto on salaries—Bengaluru offered the highest pay packets to techies. To no one’s surprise, the recent Global Tech Talent Guidebook 2025 by CBRE says Bengaluru has the largest tech talent market in the Asia-Pacific.
Why, one might wonder, does a city beset with the many problems caused by its creaky infrastructure and crumbling under its own success continue to attract so many startups, founders and techies? Recently, I was talking to the founder of an Accel-funded AI startup that shifted base from Gurugram to Bengaluru. “Full of MNCs, the culture there was very corporate-ish. As a startup, we felt like a cultural misfit there,” he said. This founder decided to move with his entire team to Bengaluru. “None of my people had problems shifting to the city,” he said.
Many founders say Mumbai’s costly real estate has made the city inhospitable. When I was researching my book on Bengaluru, Harshil Mathur, who incubated Razorpay in Rajasthan, told me about the pay-it-forward culture in Bengaluru that makes it special. Many talked about how the ecosystem supports them through their volatile startup journeys. Tarun Mehta, who started Ather Energy at IIT-Madras and later moved to Bengaluru, said Flipkart’s Sachin Bansal took a risky bet on him and funded Ather Energy in 2014 when Mehta had almost given up.(This story appears in the 27 June, 2025 issue of Forbes India. To visit our Archives, click here.)
