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India diary, day 10: Lost in Pune
R&D and road rage...

By Steve Ranger

Published: Tuesday 13 March 2007

Tuesday 13 February - Pune

I've set myself a bit of a challenge for my second day in Pune - three meetings, in three different parts of town, in one day. With the traffic as it is, I'm wondering if I'm going to make it.

Special Report: Inside India

In February silicon.com's Steve Ranger visited the Indian tech hotspots of Bangalore, Mumbai, Pune and Hyderabad to explore the exploding Indian offshore tech and BPO industry. Keep up with his daily diaries here.

♦ India diary, day 1: Cyberbad on Sunday
♦ India diary, day 2: Emergency calls and rural life
♦ India diary, day 3: Inside the outsourcing campus
♦ India diary, day 4: Hyderabad's tech park
♦ India diary, day 5: Margaritas to Mumbai
♦ India diary, day 6: Prime Minister's question time
♦ India diary, day 7: Mobiles in Mumbai
♦ India diary, day 8: Pune or bust
♦ India diary, day 9: An auto-rickshaw ride and a catwalk show
♦ India diary, day 10: Lost in Pune
♦ India diary, day 11: I heart Bangalore
♦ India diary, day 12: Searching for the next big thing
♦ India diary, day 13: Thirsty in Bangalore

The first is with Xansa at its Talawade campus. Many of the roads in Pune aren't in the best condition and as I head out into the edge of town they get worse. After enjoying a few wrong turns I check my watch and realise I've been in the car for more than an hour and a half - and I'm pretty sure we're lost.

Then suddenly the cab pulls up outside a low concrete building. I'm not sure this is the right place but my driver insists it is.

I make my way inside and am ushered into a rather antique office to meet the manager. On the door is the name of the company - Hans. Not quite Xansa. So it's back to the car for another try.

The road leading to the technology park looks like it has been hit by a hurricane. And then possibly a minor earthquake. Both of which took place about five minutes before I got there. The roads here still have a long way to go.

I finally make it to Xansa's green and pleasant campus for my meeting. It's like many other campuses I've visited, except this one is also home to the work outsourced to the NHS Shared Business Services. After a tour and a chat with the executives in charge I'm off again.

I'm heading back into town - on the roads that make me wish I'd rented a 4x4 - to a meeting with Gartner, to discuss the future of Indian services companies and Indian entrepreneurship.

Then I'm off again to the outskirts - on the other side of town, at Hadapsar - to meet TCS' research and development team.

It has a very different and very academic feel to it, compared to the other facilities I've visited so far.

It's halfway between an academic research centre and a company lab. Professor Mathai Josephs who runs the centre explains: "It's a fairly unusual research environment and we've kept that mix alive very consciously."

It's interesting to see the R&D work done by an India company because one of the criticisms regularly levelled is that they lack innovation. It is an issue I'm going to return to again as I'll be visiting more research centres when I go to the tech capital that is Bangalore - which is where I'm heading next.

Have you visited India to check out the outsourcing options? Or have you been affected by offshoring here in the UK? We want to hear your stories about India. Leave your comments below or email editorial@silicon.com.