Based in Bangalore, it provides one-to-one tuition on the Internet to students in (he says) 225 countries, but mainly in the USA, about 25,000 students in all.

Most of his friends had either moved to Bangalore or were unemployed.

But the city, south of Bangalore, is also a good place to observe monuments to India's modern might.

When a tech giant sets up an R&D lab in a new location such as Beijing or Bangalore, more than 95% of the researchers are hired locally.

Many employees in the industry hail from small, conservative communities in India's vast hinterlands and feel liberated when they come to big cities such as Bangalore or Mumbai.