Bay Area is like a second home to me I guess. Lots of people I know now live in the Bay Area. So this short visit on official business to San Mateo/San Jose I actually seem to be having fun after some 3 weeks of day and night slogging for the "cause".

So lets see where else I lived
Yamunanagar: The town where I was born at the Waryam Singh Hospital, my parents still live there and a few friends from high school. I guess I spent almost half of my life at this place. I considered multiple times to setup like something like a small town ISP and 'retire' here for the rest of my life and times, but the lure of excitement life outside this town has held me back as yet.
Chandigarh: The retired person's town ;-) holds almost no attraction for me.
Delhi: The number of my friends in Delhi is getting less and less by as people either move out to the US/Canada/UK or Bangalore/Pune. However I had the maximum amount of fun in Delhi.

Bay Area: All the great places here including San-Francisco, San-Mateo, Palo Alto, Mountain View, Santa Clara ( not been much of a San Jose person). The feeling of being there when you are at the valley, whether listening to youtube starting to happen or numerous other startups on virgin ideas. The great indian food ( though the ingredients in food are a bit bland ) in the bay area, innumerable friends acquired here during the previous stint or the ones who moved to Bay Area. Bay Area makes me feel at home even during this short visit here. I am loving it.

Pune: Haven't had much chance to explore Pune, as I have been mostly slogging hard to kind of try and help do my bit to keep the new trend of Silicon Valley like startups solely based out of Pune turning it into atleast a mini-ecosystem for startups away from the real Silicon Valley. Bangalore with its heavy outsourcing industry is also fostering a lot of exciting new idea arbitrage startups and even innovative startups in NMS/Mobile. However the feel to Koregaon Park with its Palo Alto's California Ave like buzz has something good to it. Maybe I'll make Pune my home after being a trendsetter, maybe it is just an "experiment" doomed to failure.

Feels good to be connected and rooted in different parts of the world at the same time.

The ecosystem for startups in Pune seems to be getting hotter. I met yet another entrepreneur who returned from the Valley to prototype a new product before pitching to the VCs. Some of my friends who are into angel investing and incubation now believe that, it is possible for Pune to become the Silicon Valley of India rather than Bangalore and all the land between Mumbai and Pune will turn into gold.

Why Pune?
1. Chilled out city with not much prudishness or bigotry. Most people are not fussy and have a let live attitude towards everyone else.
2. Its not set in outsourcing culture like Bangalore and there are a lot of freshers who might be willing to look at startup culture of ESOPs and product development instead of spending years working under managers at Outsourcing companies.
3. Presence of valley returnees and angels who seem to think Pune is a good place to hangout and figure out the right direction in good time as the cost of thinking and doing nothing in India is too low.
4. Osho Ashram: it brings in a fair share of foreigners to this place and the easy going life style of coffee shops and eateries encouraging hanging out a la California Ave in Palo Alto exists right here at Koregaon Park between Lane 1 to Lane 6.
5. Many funded startups or their major development centers exist in Pune now creating a kind of support system for entrepreneurs and easy presence of bouncing boards for ideas.This also means that VCs have a kind of familiarity with the Entrepreneurs/Engineers of Pune.
6. Temperate weather more or less throughout the year just like Bangalore.
7. IT parks and like facilities and a very cooperative and in-corruptible STPI(Software Technology Parks of India) with single window clearance facilities. Yes this is not unique to Pune alone but it helps.
8. Metro Ethernet and Wifi projects are being experimented by many telcos in Pune, which raises the possibility of Pune becoming the best in the country for Internet infrastructure.
9. Nearness to Mumbai the financial capital of the country without the high rents and high costs associated with it.
10. Presence of more than a 100 colleges throughout the city giving it a university town like feel. None of them is an elite insititution of the class of IITs/NITs but some of them have made their mark.

Update: circa, 2008 The live and let live attitude is now tempered with the rise of sons of soil politicians trying to pit Marathi pride against the outsider ( North Indians like yours truly ). Pune is off my list of cities to live or do a startup.

Interestingly I am back in the Bay Area. Perhaps this time I'll do more to understand the local culture.
Yamunanagar: Home. Parents have no long term plans to stay in Yamunanagar. Either the move would be to Delhi-NCR region or Chandigarh.
New Delhi: The capital of India with a huge number of flyovers.
Singapore: The small and beautiful country
Hongkong: Another small and beautiful country
SFO: The San Francisco airport
Mountain View: Will live here for some time now
Palo Alto: The rich man's town. People come here to work so will I.