Piyush Goyal wants India to have its own Silicon Valley.
The commerce and industry minister on Monday called for India to set up a township for entrepreneurs and start-ups.
“We should be aspiring to go beyond. We should be aspiring to have our own Silicon Valley. I know Bengaluru is the Silicon Valley of India. But I think it’s time we also start thinking in terms of maybe tying up with National Industrial Corridor Development Corporation Limited and creating a whole new township dedicated to entrepreneurs, startups, innovators, and disruptors…,” Goyal said.
The National Industrial Corridor Development Corporation (NICDC) has been tasked with implementing the National Industrial Corridor Development Programme –an ambitious infrastructure plan aiming to develop new industrial cities as smart cities.
NIDC is developing nearly two dozen townships in different parts of the country, including Bihar, Gujarat, and Andhra Pradesh.
Goyal, addressing startup firms during the launch of Bharat Startup Knowledge Access Registry (BHASKAR) Portal in the National Capital, said, “Can we create a society, or a whole 200 (or) 100 (or) 500 acre area land… see whether we can create some ecosystem… whether its somebody coming from a very far-off place with an idea, who does not know where and whom to connect with can land up there (in the township) like once upon a time people used to come to Mumbai.”
But what do we know about Silicon Valley? How did it begin? And how did it boom?
Let’s take a closer look:
What is it?
Silicon Valley is located in the Bay Area of San Francisco.
It is part of the Santa Clara Valley in Northern California.
Around the world, it is famed for being a hub for progress and innovation.
Silicon refers to the production of semiconductors in which silicon chips are used.
The term itself was first used by Electronic News in 1971 in a three-part series from journalist Don Hoefler on the history of semiconductors.
But Hoefler did not come up with the term. He borrowed it from his friend and businessman Ralph Vaerst.
Silicon Valley is spread across 4,800 square kilometres. Around three million people live there.
Over 30 multinational companies on the Forbes Fortune 1000 list have headquarters in Silicon Valley.
These include giants such as Apple, Google, Meta, Netflix, Nvidia, Cisco Systems, Intel, Visa and Chevron.
Though the prestigious Stanford University is Silicon Valley’s biggest school, it is also home to several other institutions of learning.
Stanford University, established by railway mogul Leland Stanford, played a crucial role in the early development of Silicon Valley. Image courtesy: Frank Schulenburg. Wikimedia Commons
It is also home to a huge number of the super-rich – 85 billionaires and 163,000 millionaires, as per Power and Beyond.com.
Little surprise then that Silicon Valley’s median income is higher than that of San Francisco, California, and the United States.
People in Silicon Valley earned an average of $149,588 per year compared to $136,692 and $91,551 in San Francisco and California in 2022.
The US average, meanwhile, was $74,755, as per Investopedia.
How did it all begin?
Very slowly.
According to Power and Beyond.com, till the 1890s, the Santa Clara Valley was best known for its fruit orchards – cherries, pears, apricots, and French plums were produced here.
The valley was responsible for producing 30 per cent of all the world’s prunes.
However, all that would change in 1891.
This was when railway mogul Leland Stanford established Stanford University.
Stanford University then gained fame in 1909 after then university president David Starr Jordan opened up the chequebook to help Lee de Forrest make his audion tube.
The vacuum tube would magnify a weak electric signal – which would prove to be a massive achievement in human history.
However, others give the credit for Silicon Valley to Frederick Terman.
Terman, a teacher at Stanford, was responsible for turning its electrical engineering department a top notch research lab.
He is known as the father of Silicon Valley.
However, students upon graduating Stanford kept searching for their fame and fortune elsewhere.
Terman decided to rectify this –and did so by funding local businesses that would hire the students.
One of the businesses Terman funded?
A small company, by two Stanford students William Hewlett and David Packard, known as Hewlett-Packard, as per Power and Beyond.
Many people pinpoint the opening of HP, in a Palo Alto garage, as the moment where Silicon Valley was born.
The Palo Alto garage where Hewlett-Packard was born. Image courtesy: BrokenSphere. Wikimedia Commons
In 1941, William Shockley, John Bardeen, and Walter H Brattain would come up with the first working transistor at Bell Labs.
Today, we call this transistor a microprocessor.
Shockley would leave Bell Labs and go on to found his own firm Shockley Semiconductors Laboratory in 1955.
As per Business Insider, Shockley Semiconductors Laboratory, in Mountain View, would be the first firm to use silicon to build transistors.
By then, Terman had established the Stanford Research Park – a joint enterprise of Stanford University and Palo Alto city.
In 1957, eight employees of Shockley Semiconductors Laboratory would resign.
These employees, who Shockley nicknamed the “Traitorous Eight,” would team up with Sherman Fairchild and establish Fairchild Semiconductor.
Robert Noyce and Jack Kilby, part of the “Traitorous Eight” would discover that every part of a circuit could be built using silicon.
This would ultimately lead to the founding of the integrated circuit – still used in every microprocessor.
In 1961, ex-Fairchild backer Arthur Rock would form Davis & Rock – America’s first venture capital firm.
From now on, the funds to Silicon Valley would flow freely.
Fairchild Semiconductor built its reputation by helping make computer parts for Nasa’s Apollo program.
Members of the “Traitorous Eight” would go on to find their own success.
Gordon Moore and Robert Noyce, for example, founded Intel in 1968. Other members also helped establish AMD and Nvidia.
The boom
In 1969, the Stanford Research Institute became home to one of four nodes of the government research project Arpanet.
Arpanet, which would be used to connect government computers and help researchers share documents, would later transform into the internet.
In 1970, Xerox would open its lab in Palo Alto.
Xerox’s lab would be responsible for much of the early technology including ethernet computing and the graphical user interface.
The decade saw heavyweights such as Atari, Apple, Microsoft and Oracle established in the Bay Area – which became the place to go. The 1980s saw Adobe, Cisco and Sun Microsystems being established, while the 1990s saw the founding of Netscape, e-bay, Google, Yahoo, Amazon, PayPal, and Netflix are founded.
Meta, X, Tesla and Uber are founded would be founded in the next decade.
For anyone dreaming of success in Tech, Silicon Valley remains the place to be.
With inputs from agencies
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Publish date : 2024-09-16 22:35:00
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