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Comment by Jedd | Hacker News Reader

> ... Bangalore having 8 unicorns vs Delhi's 11.

How much of that is related to government influence (the effectiveness of pushing Bangalore & Hydrabad to be tech centers)?

I note that Bangalore's population is 8m, while Delhi is 21m. If it was 'unicorns per population' then you'd naively expect a ratio of 8:21, not 8:11.

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Holy crap - I forget sometimes how many people are in India. Compare those two numbers to LA's 4M people and you start to remember how small America is population wise. With the way that tech is going AKA Eyeballs/ads/consumerism equals money, the tech scene in India is going to be much bigger than the US in the future.

From a global viewpoint America is also massive. India and China are just outliers. There are entire nations with smaller populations than some neighborhoods in New York or Los Angeles.

LA is 12MM people (LA county).

Which is not than the population of Belgium[1]

1.https://www.google.com/search?q=population+of+Belgium&oq=pop...

Out of 190+ countries, America is in 3rd place for largest in the world by population with 330MM people. [0]

And if America, overnight, produced 1 billion more people?

It would still be in 3rd place.

[0] https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/population-by...

India will likely tie China in population after the current famine in China - expecting around 200 million casualties in the next year.

Yes, but India's nominal GDP is half that of California; in fact India's GDP per-capita is lower than just about every country in ASEAN and East Asia. The entire country's GDP is similar to that of the Tokyo metropolitan area. The socio-economic indicators are actually more aligned with impoverished African nations.

These are clear indicators of state failure.

True but not sure if you considered Power Purchasing Parity of Indians. India is able to manufacture most of the stuff for itself at the moment and hence everything is cheap in India. From basic things like soda cans that cost 10x less in India than the US to the same online services that also cost 10x less.

The GDP per capita might be less in terms of the US standards but the Power Purchasing Parity makes up for it plus we can't forget that the nominal GDP is still in Top 3/Top 5 in the world ( depends on what source you look at ).

India has a negative trade balance so still need "strong" currency to buy abroad, same thing for its citizens to travel and its companies to expand internationally. The size of the economy is nothing to sneeze at, but in the same way PPP gdp is more important than nominal for the average citizen, per capita is way more important than total GDP, that's the reason anybody would pick to live in the small economies of San Marino, Luxembourg, Monaco o Curacao over India or Nigeria.

You make an interesting point. However, India and Nigeria are starkly different, just food for thought. It's almost like comparing U.S with South Africa.

> However, India and Nigeria are starkly different, just food for thought.

No, they are not. GDP nominal per capita: India: 2000, Nigeria: 2000. GDP PPP per Capita, India: 6000, Nigeria : 5000

> It's almost like comparing U.S with South Africa.

GDP PPP per capita: US: 63000, South Africa: 12000. GDP nominal per Capita, US: 63000, South Africa : 5000

There's massive income disparity in India. Nominal per capita income for the richest state is nearly 9x of the poorest state.

Not an apples to apples comparison - LA metro area has a population of 13 million.

Delhi has 4 really good engineering schools as well (IIT and IIIT-Delhi are world class, DCE/DTU and NSIT / NSUT have equally smart kids). In my experience they aren't going for big company jobs now but are more geared towards joining smaller firms or starting something of their own. Co-working space is also a big thing there. Transport isn't as bad as Bangalore. Hope the air is better and women's safety increases as well. The food is the best in India - my biased take :)

> Delhi has 4 really good engineering schools as well

IIT has an engineering faculty, but is not 100% eng. That's a common misconception in the US.

It's predominantly known for the JEE and it's engineering program. Yes there are other programs.

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