From Bangalore

We landed yesterday in what is called “the Silicon Valley” of India. Among our destinations in India, Bangalore is the one that most resembles a modern Western City. Our only scheduled destination yesterday was a visit with an outsourcing firm founded by a man described as the architect of the I.T. industry in Bangalore. This man and his firm were mentioned in Tom Friedman’s The World Is Flat. Later that evening, our professor took a bunch of us to dinner at a restaurant called MTR. MTR is well known for the line of packaged foods it sells in Indian supermarkets worldwide. The dinner for six (including beverages) cost a total of 310 rupees (approximately $7.11 USD).

We spent this morning visiting the crown jewel of India’s I.T. industry. The company sits on a 100 acre campus that resembles more like a city (imagine the AOL campus raised to the third power) than your typical office park. In the afternoon we visited an apparel manufacturer that is the biggest supplier to Victoria’s Secret. The general manager showed us the factory floor (see photos) and explained some of the steps that go into manufacturing something that will later be supplied to a retailer. Part of the process involves testing the fabric colors under lighting specified by the retailer to ensure that the end products will display the desired color under the lighting used by each individual retail chains. The last part of the process is running each garment through a metal detector to make sure no pins are embedded in the product that may accidentally injure the purchaser.

Tomorrow afternoon it’s “wheels up” for Mumbai. Mumbai will serve as a stark contrast to Bangalore. It includes some the most devastating poverty we will witness on this trip. I look forward to blogging to you then.