My introduction to Bengaluru (then Bangalore) happened in 1983. I joined Wipro fresh from business school and stayed at the Gautam Hotel. It was ₹70 for a double room. We’d hang out at the Coffee House, The Only Place, The Rice Bowl, and a Chinese rooftop restaurant at Ashoka – whose name I have forgotten – where Shyam and the West Wind played. I recently caught up with the band on YouTube with a grainy video of their performance on Doordarshan in the 1980s. The oomph of the performance transported me right back to those times -- full of fire, energy, dreams, and possibilities.
I relocated to Mumbai with Wipro and returned to Bangalore as — what else? — a start-up team. We launched Computer Point in January 1985 on 43 Dickenson Road. It became India’s first computer retail chain. Then I was off to the Bay Area in the U.S. to set up Sonata Software, a sister company of Computer Point, before coming back to Bangalore in 1989 to set up my technology venture, Microland.
