(This month, each day, except the four Sundays, I will be blogging about interesting features associated with Bengaluru, formerly known as Bangalore, as part of the Blogging from A to Z April Challenge)
With offices of around 200 companies, it is one of the largest electronics industrial parks in India.
During the tech boom of the late 1990s, this enclave came to be known as the global capital of outsourcing and triggered both an educational as well as employment boom.
The area has had phenomenal growth with many multistoried apartment complexes and some top-class management institutions coming up.
Unlike many localities of Bengaluru city, this is a modern township, comprising what were two villages, and has nothing very historical to write home about.
WHERE IT ALL STARTED
The origins can be traced back to a visionary engineer, Rama Krishna Baliga (1929-1988). In the mid-1970s, he visualised the potential of electronics in the future and had a dream of making Bengaluru the Silicon Valley of India.
In 1978, the first step was taken, with the establishment of the Electronics City on 332 acres of land spread over two villages of Konappana Agrahara and Doddathogur, by Keonics (Karnataka State Electronics Development Corporation) of which Baliga was the first Chairman and Managing Director.
 |
| One of the buildings of IT bellwether Infosys commonly referred to as the Infosys pyramid. Photo credit: Ashwin Kumar/Wikimedia |
POST-1991 BOOM
The famed economic liberalisation of 1991 spearheaded by the minority government of Narasimha Rao and his economist-finance minister Manmohan Singh (who later became a 2-term prime minister himself) catapulted Electronics City to the orbit Baliga dreamt of, with a quantum jump in the number of global IT companies setting up their offices here.
In 1997, Keonics handed over the management of the E City to the Electronics City Industries Association. In 2013, the government officially designated the areas as the Electronics City Industrial Township Area.
HELITAXI
The hub became the first destination in the country to be connected by a regular helitaxi service. In 2018, Kerala-based Thumby Aviation launched a service that flies passengers across 54 km or 33.5 miles in 15 minutes. By road, normally this distance will take at least two hours. I am not sure if the service still exists.
(Tomorrow, it's about a drink that's very common in Bengaluru)
REFERENCES
Electronics City Industries Association
Electronic City Bangalore Regional Portal
Bengaluru's first helitaxi service takes off - The Hindu