By Anand Parthasarathy
October 14, 2023: When the  full 43 kms of  Bengaluru Metro’s Purple line from Challaghatta in the city’s western suburbs to Whitefield ( Kadugodi) in the east opened  suddenly on October 9, without fanfare, the daily ridership on the sector between  Baiyappanhalli and Whitefield  jumped tenfold from  28,000 to over 2.8 lakhs.
The reason? Finally after long delays, the entire  technology corridor from KrishnaRajPura (KR Pura), 2 stations from Baiyappanahalli  to Whitefield  was connected to  rest of the Metro’s  Green and Purple lines enabling   lakhs of InfoTech professionals to  forsake private cars and taxi cabs  and embrace the Metro.  For many,  it  meant cutting an hour or ninety minutes  each way from their daily commute – while cutting down the expense, one way  from a few  hundred rupees  to  Rs 60  or less.
In effect the new line whose entire length is covered in 80 minutes instead of  2 hours  or more by road with trains every 10 minutes –  3-5 minutes in some sections at peak hours – enabled  Benguluru techies  to  attend work in the   Whitefield  technology area from where ver they lived – almost.
Those in the southern bedroom suburbs of JP Nagar and Jayanagar, could take the  Green line and change at the  Majestic interchange to the Purple line, as could those in the northern regions of the city – Malleswaram, Yeshwantpur and Jalahalli.
And for those living in the  western  suburbs of  Vijaynagar, or the new towns of Kengeri, it was a nonstop, no-change journey home on the Purple line which also  touched the central business district around MG Road and the bustling Indira Nagar  area.
The 13 km from KR Pura to Whitefield is now a  unique section – a sort of Techies’ Special, its 10 halts  touching  almost every major Information Technology company that makes its home in Bengaluru. There is arguably no equivalent  tech corridor  served by an urban metro line any where in the world. Consider:
First stop after KR Pura is Singayyanapalya,home to the largest HP Enterprise facility in the city. 
Next, alight at Garudacharapalya for large private  tech parks like Brigade Metropolis Summit, home to Capgemini, EY and others as well as the Bhoruka Tech Park and the Nalapad Brigade Centre housing dozens of smaller tech outfits.
Hoodi  is the stop for the large NetApp facility , the offices of Airbus, ABB as well as the Brigade Southfields tech park.
Seetharampalya connects to the Visvesvaraya  Industrial Area, a cluster of  traditional small industries as well as tech companies housed in  Prestige Technostar and  Bagmane Solarium.
The metro line swings south here to touch  SAP Labs at the Kundalahalli station, which is closest for other companies including Qualcomm, WNS and the RMZ Nxt tech park.
Next stop Nallurahalli is  opposite GE Healthcare  and  the large exhibition centre of the Karnataka Trade Promotion  Organization. A little away are the offices of Tesco, Huawei, Accenture and the  Brigade IRV Centre whose shell office spaces are home to many startups
The Sathya Sai Hospital stop  is close by Makino India, the SJR Park and the Gopalan Global Axis, while Oracle and LTIMindtree and just down the road.
Whitefield’s largest tech centre and Bengaluru’s first integrated tech park  – the 69 acre  International Tech Park Bangalore (ITPB) – comes next opposite the Pattanduru Agrahara stop.  Home to some 85 tech companies including biggies like AT&T, General Motors, Atos, Xerox, Sharp and Applied Materials, the park started by Singapore-based Ascendas in 1994 welcomes nearly 40,000 tech professionals and ancillary workers everyday. It is an integrated facility complete with a mall – the Park Square  --and the five star Vivanta by Taj hotel. The stop also serves the tech companies including UST, CapGemini, Nielsenand  Oracle housed in Prestige Shantiniketan which includes a separate residential section of  apartments and  a mall.
The Kadugodi Tree Park is a recent  green retreat – and the stop is the place to find  IT companies within the  Salarpuria GR TechPark ( TCS, HCL)  and  Brigade Tech Park as well as the TCS building housed in Brigade Bhuwalka Icon.
The Hope Farm  is the next stop as yet with no IT companies – but that is set to change as  the Sumadhura group is putting the finishing touches to a vast new complex.
It’s the line’s  last stop at Whitefield which is convenient for the  Bengaluru bus terminus as well as the Whitefield mainline railway station –  a neat way for techies who want a weekend getaway to Chennai.
For map and illustrations see here

This article has appeared in Swarajya