Getting a Small Chunk of Indian’s Pie: Can Bali Camp Make Bali to be the Next Bangalore?

By D. Manggala

In the heart of Bali Island, in the cool mountain wind of Bedugul, Bali Camp’s office could be overlooked as another bungalow. Its cozy design in the terrace of the mountains must be the place that many people would die for to be in there. Ten minutes driving from this place is the Lake Beratan, one of the beautiful places in Bali.

Question, anyone? Oh, you wanna surfing, mate? Let’s go to Kuta or Legian or Canggu, it’s just about one hour driving.  It’s absolutely Bali Camp has a perfect location for its employee.

But the real question maybe this one: “Is Bali a good place for IT business?”

Bali’s interactions with many foreigners through tourism could be an opportunity to develop an IT business in this island of thousand temples. In a far smaller scale, Bali should attract Australian companies to consider Bali Camp as the Indonesian version of Indian’s Infosys. The biggest opportunity is the [almost] disappearance of distance as the benefit of advance telecommunication technology and internet. Yes, now we can put a bunch of programmers in the middle of nowhere including in the mountain of Bali without necessary worrying about productivity. And the jobs could come from anyplace in the world: Australia, US, India, China, EU…

So, the next question maybe: “How Bali Camp could lead local IT industries to grow?”

The answer is closely related to investment, infrastructure and, the most important, the pool of intellectual capital.

Let’s see how the three components are:

Investment:

Just like India lures US companies to Bangalore, Bali Camp could do the same thing to investors from Australia and maybe others from China, US or EU. Low cost and better quality must be the ‘theme’ of this lure. Unfortunately, the bombs in October 2002 must have changed every consideration to invest in Bali.

Infrastructure:

Telecommunication, internet access, and electricity reliability will be the major factors for supporting IT industries. Unfortunately, just like many places in Indonesia, the infrastructures in Bali are far below average international industry standard.

Intellectual Capital:

This is the biggest challenges for developing IT industries in Bali. Most of good engineering schools are in Java; plus… generally in Indonesia, it is still very hard to find qualified programmers especially with good communication in English.

Since it’s very hard to expect government’s supports, let’s hope that Bali Camp will be as strong as Infosys in India, and will be the locomotive of new IT era in Indonesia.

Notes:

Bali Camp is a subsidiary of Sigma Group, a leading Indonesian IT company, can be visited at www.balicamp.com (all pictures are taken from this website)

Bali is a beautiful-small island in Indonesia, could be visited at www.balivision.com/dpsmun/index4.html