Bengaluru: Every three months or so, Sonia Parandekar boards a plane in Southern India bound for Sydney. She’s based in Bengaluru, one of the world’s biggest IT hubs, but has a senior role at Australian software giant Atlassian.
The regular travel is needed to manage her team, which is spread across both locations.
“I joined Atlassian right when we started the office in Bengaluru six years ago,” says Parandekar, Atlassian’s head of engineering for commerce. “From the beginning I have been travelling back and forth.”
She’s one of many Atlassian employees who move between the Sydney headquarters and Bengaluru, also called Bangalore, where the firm has about 1900 staff.
“When I look at some of the teams that work across both the geographies, they really seem to enjoy working with each other,” Parandekar says. “We love to talk about cricket, and there’s a bit of banter about who’s winning and who’s not.”
Atlassian executive Sonia Parandekar at the firm’s head office in Sydney. Her travel program epitomises the growing links between Australia and South India.Credit: Dion Georgopoulos
Last year India became the world’s most populated nation, with more than 1.4 billion people. Most Australians know it is a rising power and an increasingly important trading partner.
But Parandekar’s routine exemplifies the burgeoning economic and cultural links between Australia and one part of India: its thriving south.
The five states that comprise that region – Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana and Kerala – are home to more than 280 million people, or 20 per cent of India’s population.
But together they contribute about 31 per cent of its gross domestic product.
The booming south
In 2018 Peter Varghese, a former secretary of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT), and former high commissioner to India, authored An Indian Economic Strategy to 2035 for the federal government.
He recommended Australian businesses adopt a regional approach to engagement with India due to the country’s vast scale and economic complexity. The report suggested a commercial focus on 10 states, four of them in India’s south (Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Telangana and Andhra Pradesh).
Varghese says the priority given to southern states in his India strategy reflected the region’s economic dynamism.
“I don’t think that story has fundamentally changed,” he says.
Varghese says southern states have some clear advantages over other Indian regions including higher levels of education, more skilled labour, superior infrastructure, greater manufacturing capacity and relatively effective provincial governments.
“I think all of those factors will continue to define the nature of opportunities for Australia in the southern states,” he says.
An update to Varghese’s India strategy, published by DFAT in 2022, described the region as “India’s dynamic south” and emphasised its economic strengths.
The imposing structure of Vidhana Soudha stands in the centre of Bengaluru, housing the state’s main government institutions. Credit: iStock
“It boasts well-established industries, including automotive manufacturing and pharmaceuticals, and competes globally in high-tech manufacturing including growing aerospace and biotechnology sectors,” the update said. “It has strong service sectors and dominates India’s information technology market. India’s south has favourable operating environments, strong global connectivity, skilled workforces and attracts relatively high levels of foreign investment. A history of investment in health, education, and social welfare has resulted in medium to high human development and GDP per capita 50 per cent higher than India’s national average.”
In 2022, the two countries concluded the Australia-India Economic Co-operation and Trade Agreement (ECTA) paving the way for deeper economic engagement.
Nitin Pai, director of the Bengaluru-based Takshashila Institution think tank, says Varghese’s strategy to engage individual Indian states has been successful.
“The southern states have been the first set to take advantage of this opening in Australia-India relations because they have more global interests and orientation than the others,” he says.
Minister for Foreign Affairs Penny Wong said having a second consul general in the region would strengthen Australia’s technology partnership with South India.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen
Ian Hall, professor of international relations at Griffith University, says Australian governments have worked hard to build commercial and cultural links with south India.
“There’s been a major investment on Australia’s part to try and build up profile in that part of the country,” he says.
In 2023, the Australian government opened a consulate in Bengaluru which is only 350 kilometres east of Chennai, where Australia has a long-standing diplomatic mission.
Foreign Minister Penny Wong said having a second consul general in the region would “deepen Australia’s trade, investment and people-to-people ties and strengthen our technology partnership with this dynamic part of South India”.
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Hall says one area of interest for the federal government is the advanced manufacturing capacity in Southern India, especially Tamil Nadu, which has the potential to help Australia diversify its production supply chains, and reduce dependence on Chinese manufacturing.
State government commercial strategies have also zeroed in on India’s south; Victoria and Queensland have trade and investment offices in Bengaluru while NSW has one in Mumbai. The Victorian and Queensland governments have also published India economic strategy documents recently which emphasise opportunities in the country’s south.
North-south divide
India’s five southern states have long outperformed the rest of the nation on key economic indicators, including GDP per person, health and literacy.
The global economic advisory firm Oxford Economics recently forecast those five states to lead India’s GDP growth rankings during the next five years, with average annual expansion of 7 per cent.
It predicts two of those states – Telangana and Karnataka – will achieve growth of 7.6 per year over that period, nearly 1 percentage point higher than the forecast for India as a whole. “These states are consistently at the forefront of the highly skilled services sectors driving India’s economy,” the Oxford Economics report said.
There are even concerns that South India’s economic success will stoke political division between that region and the more densely populated but poorer states of Northern India. Some political leaders in South India already complain their states do not receive a fair share of tax contributions to the central government, including from a goods and services tax introduced in 2017.
Southern megacities
The South India megacities of Bengaluru, Chennai and Hyderabad embody India’s new modern, tech-driven economy and compete as hubs for science, innovation, technology and start-ups.
Bengaluru is home to about 14 million people, the population having nearly tripled during the past 25 years. Dubbed “the Silicon Valley of Asia” because of its enormous tech sector, Bengaluru plays a crucial role in the global economy; corporations from across the globe have operations in the city, including Australian banks and IT firms. Bengaluru is also the base for India’s burgeoning space program.
This image provided by the ISRO shows the Aditya-L1 spacecraft lifting off on board a satellite launch vehicle from the space centre in Sriharikota, India in 2023.Credit: Indian Space Research Organisation via AP
South India’s big cities have attracted an army of well-educated workers who live in affluent middle-class suburbs. HBR Layout, a bustling neighbourhood in northern Bengaluru, is typical; on a Saturday afternoon its swanky cafes, boutiques and salons are buzzing.
Suburbs like these have been the source of many migrants and overseas students who have come to Australia over the past two decades.
South India also has a host of smaller cities with well-educated populations and sophisticated manufacturing sectors.
Aviation connections have enhanced travel between south India and south-eastern Australia. In September 2022 Qantas launched direct flights between Sydney and Bengaluru, becoming the first airline to operate non-stop services between the cities.
Australia’s Consul General in Bengaluru, Hilary McGeachy, said the direct aviation link reflected “the rapidly expanding people-to-people ties across all areas” of the Australia-India relationship, including overseas students.
Direct flights between Bengaluru and Sydney have made working across the two cities “even easier” than before, says Atlassian’s Sonia Parandekar.
Sonia Parandekar at Atlassian’s head office in Sydney.Credit: Dion Georgopoulos
Atlassian’s founder and chief executive Mike Cannon-Brookes says India has been the firm’s fastest-growing research and development site since it opened an office in Bengaluru in 2018.
“This is an important partnership for us as we continue to invest and grow our ambition in such a key tech market,” he says. “India’s tech talent is world-class, and we want to hire the smartest technical minds across the country.”
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While a significant share of Atlassian’s Indian workforce is based in Bengaluru, the firm’s “Team Anywhere” policy, which allows staff to work remotely, has allowed it to draw talent from across the country. About a third of Atlassian’s Indian employees are based in smaller cities.
Ram Gorlamandala, the founder of Tat Capital, a Sydney firm that facilitates trade and investment between Australia and India, says southern India has “natural advantages” when it comes to economic partnership with Australia.
“An appreciation of doing business with companies from Western nations is well understood by entrepreneurs in Southern India and leaders in the political systems there has a long-standing track record of welcoming global companies,” says Gorlamandala, who was born in Andhra Pradesh and is now based in north-western Sydney.
“Some of the nation’s largest companies – the likes of CBA, ANZ and Atlassian – have established major operations in Bengaluru. That’s a clear indication that Australia is looking at these South Indian states as a natural partner.”
Cultural connections
Ashwin Dhanabalan, a 28-year-old academic working at the Centre for East Asian Studies at Christ University in Bengaluru, says “two-way” cultural and economic connections between Australia and his home city are growing, especially since the federal government opened the consulate.
Bengaluru academic Ashwin Dhanabalan, 28, says links between Australia and his home city are growing.Credit: Matt Wade
“With direct flights, there is greater potential for Indian tourists to visit Australia and for Australian tourists to visit parts of Southern India too,” he says. “I also sense the potential for academic collaboration between universities in Australia and universities in the southern part of India.”
Dhanabalan says he often meets many young people in Bengaluru who would like to study in Australia or migrate there. He’s also noticed more Australian agricultural produce such as fruits and wine for sale.
The number of people migrating from South Indian states to Australia is on the rise.
Census figures show the number of Australian residents who speak Telugu, one of the major South Indian languages, surged by 72 per cent between 2016 and 2021. The number speaking other South Indian languages also rose sharply, including Malayalam (+48 per cent) and Tamil (+30 per cent).
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A 2022 federal government report on the Indian diaspora said the share of Malayalam and Telugu speakers in Australia far exceeds the population share of those language groups within India.
The report points out there has been “strong growth in immigration flows” to Australia from South India during the past decade.
Gorlamandala believes the growing cultural and commercial links between Australia and South India will create big opportunities.
“It doesn’t really matter which industrial centre in Southern India you go to, there’s action everywhere,” he says.
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