Namma Bengaluru leads the way in digital transformation

BENGALURU: Beating global business hubs such as San Francisco, London, Singapore and Beijing, Bengaluru has topped the list of cities across the world with the most conducive environment for digital transformation.

Business leaders from different domains have expressed the highest levels of confidence in Bengaluru’s environment for digital transformation.

A report by the Economist Intelligence Unit released on Tuesday has found that even though Indian cities are grappling with infrastructure deficit, pollution and poverty, they have made their way to the top in terms of digital transformation.Apart from Bengaluru, New Delhi and Mumbai have also been ranked highly on various parameters on the ‘Digital Barometer’.

Overall environment, innovation and entrepreneurship, financial environment, people and skills, development of new technology and information and communication technology (ICT) infrastructure were the factors considered for the ranking.

The report, ‘Connecting commerce: Business confidence in the digital environment’ was commissioned by Telstra and authored by Denis McCauley and Charles Ross, representatives of The Economist Intelligence Unit. As many as 2,620 executives in 45 cities were surveyed in June and July 2017 for the report.
The 48-page report quotes Alpesh Shah of BCG India as saying Bengaluru was the “closest thing to Silicon Valley” in Asia, when it comes to digital entrepreneurship.

According to him, active involvement of multi-national firms, presence of venture capital (VC) firms and investment banks are helping to make Bengaluru ‘a magnet for the country’s technology talent’.
Further, the report stated that Bengaluru was also one of the top cities in the world when it came to participation in hackathons along with Oslo, New York, Seoul and Dubai. Also, with open data, city governments had a huge impact on influencing digital transformation and cyber security concerns, the report said, adding that cities in Asia-Pacific were behind the curve on open data.

On the flip side, 80 per cent of executives in the survey from Bangalore were critical of the local government’s efforts to provide ICT infrastructure that meets their companies’ digital transformation needs, compared to 60 per cent of respondents in New York, San Francisco and Singapore who were critical of their respective local governments.