YC Interviews in India

https://blog.ycombinator.com/yc-interviews-in-india/

by katm • 7 years ago

258 77 7 years ago

blog.ycombinator.com

vesh2• 7 years ago

Bengalūru, it has been 14 year since the name changed officially would appreciate if people stopped using the anglicized name of our city.

saagarjha• 7 years ago

Like it or not, Bangalore is significantly more recognizable than Bengaluru (for example, the Wikipedia page uses it). So I doubt it's going away any time soon…

dingo_bat• 7 years ago

I live here and hate the new name. It feels dumb to say it, whereas Bangalore sounds very modern. Kind of like Dilli vs Delhi.

plibither8• 7 years ago

Who knew you could also feel dumb by calling a city a certain name, and feel modern by calling it another?

Alterlife2• 7 years ago

I live here too. I like the 'new' name, it has grown on me. I think it's endearing and friendly -- like a petname. "Namma Bengaluru" vs stiff-upper-lip British Bangalore.

Putting my personal opinion aside, it's definitely not catching on: https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?q=Bengaluru,bangalo...

I still call it Bangalore in any formal setting.

rorykoehler2• 7 years ago

Bangalore is the English name. My city is called Dublin in English and Baile Átha Cliath in our native language of Irish. As an Irishman I understand better than most the resentment towards the English but really this is not a battle worth fighting. Both names are correct in their respective languages.

vesh2• 7 years ago

I don't have any resentment towards English. The city has been around for as long as the English language and nobody local never called it with the anglicized name if anything it would be more of a correction.

keerthiko7• 7 years ago

Bengaluru is now the official name in the English language. Bangalore is the British Empire's English name.

It is a relic of colonization that is worth leaving behind. This battle is completely worth fighting. If Ireland officially lists Dublin as Baile Atha Cliath for addresses, the airport, and for international English references, I will use that. This is not about two different languages, but of erasure.

Permit• 7 years ago

Using the anglicized name in English doesn't strike me as particularly egregious. (Presumably you don't say "Espanol" or "Francais" when describing other languages in English. Or describe "China" as "Zhongguo").

However, they should probably at least correct the "Banglore" misspellings in the FAQ.

adora2• 7 years ago

oops, fixed. thx :)

niyaven• 7 years ago

Lots of city names are translated.

Even in India people would probably say "Rome" instead of "Roma", "Moscow" instead of "Moskvá".

And it's not only in English, Italian would say "Tolosa" instead of "Toulouse", German would say "Mailand" instead of "Milan", French would say "Cracovie" instead of "Kraków" an so on...

kurtisc• 7 years ago

What about Bombay, Peking, Persia, Siam, Ceylon, Burma, Leningrad?

_emacsomancer_2• 7 years ago

And when you talk (in English or Kannada) about Rome, do you write (and say) 'Roma'? When you talk about Moscow, do you say 'Moskvá'?

(Even closer to home, do you say 'naaii dillii'?)

pritambaral• 7 years ago

While I agree with you in general, you would have a better case with a different city than New Delhi, because most Indians simply never use the full English name in informal parlance — it's always been 'Dilli' (in Hindi) and/or 'Deli' (in inf. Indian English). In fact, the term (and equivalents of) 'Old Delhi' see more common use than 'New Delhi', largely because the latter is the one most commonly referred to as just 'Delhi'.

achow2• 7 years ago

'Bangalore' vs 'Bengaluru' by people of Karnataka - the state of which Bangalore is capital of.

Bangalore: https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?geo=IN-KA&q=bangalo...

Bengaluru: https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?geo=IN-KA&q=bengalu...

keerthiko7• 7 years ago

please look at it for "all time" (that google has data for)

Bangalore: https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=IN-KA&...

Bengaluru: https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=IN-KA&...

This is a post-colonial battle still being fought, and India's wish to shed its colonial shackles deserves to be respected.

bprasanna• 7 years ago

This is not the right place to show your love for the name. We should be happy about YC considering Bangalore/Bengaluru as a place to conduct interviews. Your point deviates the intention of the post.

srean2• 7 years ago

Its been 70 years since the British left, I wonder why the sudden resurgence to go back to pre-British names. Bengaluru was the name for the place prior to the British, but I would argue its the British that made 'Bangalore: the garden city' out of it, that touch still remains although diminishing everyday.

simula67• 7 years ago

I think this is particularly uncharitable. YC is probably planning to invest in companies in India, we should be more charitable and not be unnecessarily antagonistic.

Also, I think this is unrealistic. Do you expect others to properly use the names of all cities ? For example : https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kozhikode. The 'zh' sound is not present outside of a few South Indian languages. It is OK if others call it Calicut IMO

EDIT: It seems the OP has edited the comment to make it more polite. Thanks OP.

Uhhrrr• 7 years ago

It would help your case if you were to write, "It has been 14 years since the name changed officially, and I would appreciate it if people stopped using the anglicized name of our city."

seeker_• 7 years ago

Seriously, you want to do this here? This is a hackernews thread not an equivalent on twitter or FB.

GordonS• 7 years ago

I know a lot of Indians in Mumbai - most of them still call it Bombay!

rococode• 7 years ago

With YC China in the works and now interviews being held in India, it looks like YC is making a strong push to get a solid foothold in two obviously huge markets that have fairly weak Western presence. Seems like a smart move, it'll definitely be interesting to see what YC looks like 10 years from now.

NTDF9• 7 years ago

Well looks like YC is stepping up their game to get a bite of the future.

gauravjain13• 7 years ago

Byte, you mean?

samravshanov• 7 years ago

Means a slice of pizza/future

coder006• 7 years ago

It's amazing to see how people are fighting over city names on a YC thread. Just amazing! When we have problems like climate change and global warming to solve, please by all means let's first decide the name of the city!

ai_ia• 7 years ago

To remind you, people also fight over if Thanos was right on the internet.

Not everyone is supposed to talk about the big problems like climate change all the time. That's kind of boring.

My two cents though.

lalith_c• 7 years ago

ycombinator shouldn’t be the medium to discuss non technology period.

captn3m0• 7 years ago

Nice to see YC doing this.

jmspring• 7 years ago

Good to see YC expand. I’m curious, though, if innovation ramps up in the startup space in both China and India, will there be a decrease in demand for immigration to the states?

My own experience across the visa spectrum is some want to move here permanently, some want to make their stake here and return back to their home country, some want to come here and build new businesses.

I don’t mean it as A discussion about immigration but more about one of innovation.

We keep hearing, despite obvious growth in other regions, SV is still ground zero for new companies.

keerthiko7• 7 years ago

SV is ground zero and probably will be for some time, but the forces of present immigration climate are unlike it has ever been in the past, and I wouldn't be surprised if it topples SV's position as the innovation hub in the near future. In the past, immigration was a minor barrier comparable to other barriers founders and innovators face regularly, but one that needed to be overcome. Today, especially with the freedom of the global internet infrastructure together nationalist political climates, immigration is starting to look like a less and less savory distraction that doesn't even justify the effort needed to overcome it.

winter_blue2• 7 years ago

The immigration situation for skilled/educated workers, has to my knowledge, always been extremely bad in the US. Right now, it's gotten worse to another level, but it's not like it was anywhere close to good before. There is no founder visa. A few rare people (including you) have managed to get the O-1 visa; but that's usually an extraordinary difficult endeavor. Even getting a new H-1B is incredibly hard, with your chance of winning in the lottery less than 40%, and there being a significantly long (~7 months) before you can even start working. Moreover, you're prohibited on having majority control over your company on an H-1B, and need to ensure there's a board that can fire you. So there's that.

Then there's getting an EB-1 approved ... I don't how you managed to get it, but kudos to you on that. From what I've read, it's incredibly difficult, and usually an order of magnitude more difficult than getting an O-1. Immigration guides often say you need win the Nobel Prize in order to qualify for it. But I've also heard luck plays a huge factor -- in terms of who your adjudicating officer is. Anyways, there's very little info out there (on the interwebs) that talks about how to succeed with an O-1 or EB-1 application. (It would be great if you could write about it.)

tosh• 7 years ago

imho from talking to many first time founders there is already a decrease in demand/aspiration to move to the states

part political climate, part living cost in sf/bay, part network becoming more global etc

TheTruth1234• 7 years ago

Absolutely. No offence, but we wouldn't touch the states with a bargepole for all the reasons you mentioned.

justforfunhere• 7 years ago

Does someone who only has an idea, but not done the implementation yet ( or not production ready ) can apply??

ignoramous3• 7 years ago

Yes, though stage creep is a real problem and some applicants show up not just with a prototype but revenue as well.

Imho, to make most out of YC demo day, you'd have to have something concrete ready, and so it helps to have started working before having interviewed with YC.

adora2• 7 years ago

Unless you just came up with the idea, it's useful to have talked to users already and/or have some data that the idea is good. Having revenue or being launched already is not a requirement.

raghavkhanna• 7 years ago

Great initiative! This should encourage more Indian/ SE Asian founders to apply, since they no longer have to think about the time spent on the arduous US visa application process - and can instead keep the focus on building their company. Kudos to YC!

jkaplowitz• 7 years ago

YC is still requiring accepted founders to be in California during the in-person program. But yes, they don't have to deal with the US visa process for the Bangalore interviews, which is an improvement.

ignoramous3• 7 years ago

VCs and Angels have picked up investments in India [0], and as a result, as far as India is concerned, YC has missed out on Unicorns, though, Razorpay/Cleartax/Meesho could be Unicorns in time.

[0] https://trak.in/india-startup-funding-investment-2015/ (URL says 2015, but the data is latest)

gajju3588• 7 years ago

For any company based out of India, working on solving problems for Indian consumers, I see very less value in applying to YC. First of all their advisors have very little or no idea about how does it work in Indian context [because haven't done startups in this area], which mind you is very different and more complicated then valley.

timwaagh• 7 years ago

please come to europe too :)

dalbasal• 7 years ago

Interesting!

I'm a big fan of pg's essays. From my pov, it was the "golden age" of blogging^. Essays like "black swan farming," "high res-society" were fascinating, and tied abstract ideas aabout startups, investing and the world to the parcticalities of how YC works. I found it fascinating.

PG did address startup hubs, why "YC of _place_" was a problematice idea and other reasons why YC is centralized where it is.

But... PG wrote about a lot of ideas. Some might lead you to the opposite conclusion, maybe increasingly as the startup industry has grown.

Ramen profitable, for example, could be a totally different proposition in India. "High resolution" is an idea that I think at some scale needs to happen outside of SV.

Since those essays, YC has scaled. That could put new possibilities on the table. Many of the reasons startups hub are fixable with scale.

I realize this is just interviews, but I reckon that "just" is not just a just.

^Another great example was joel on software and the stack overflow podcast. You could watch Joel and Jeff's abstract ideas about (eg) "social user interface" and such be implmented in software.

iddan• 7 years ago

Is Tel Aviv next?

giarc2• 7 years ago

I don't quite understand this move? Was there a big issue with founders getting accepted for an interview but then not being able to travel to the US for the interview?

sarthakjain2• 7 years ago

US visas

giarc2• 7 years ago

But for the interview they would just need a travel visa right? If they were accepted they would still need to travel to the US and have the same issue they did prior?

LeicaLatte• 7 years ago

Very cool

ozzyman700• 7 years ago

Who will be doing the interviews?

christopher8827• 7 years ago

It would be great if YC expanded to the Asia-Pacific region... somewhere easy for Aussies to reach/apply/interview like Singapore.

YC Interviews in India

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