Silicon Valley investor Tim Draper stuns his India team as Bengaluru traffic snarl looks ‘beautiful’

Tim Draper, Founder and Managing Partner, Draper Associates

Tim Draper stunned his Indian squad when he said the Bengaluru traffic snarl was "beautiful".

The legendary Silicon Valley venture capitalist is in India for the latest season of his startup pitching show 'Meet The Drapers'. “God, I love this country. The people are fantastic here. So nice to everybody and so accommodating. And I kind of like the traffic,” the founder and managing partner of Draper Associates told Moneycontrol.

“Somebody said welcome to Bangalore. And I said, the traffic here is beautiful…People are moving in and out of traffic. Those lines in the middle, they're like guidelines. They are just art on the road. They're all so colourful. And whether they're riding a little tuk-tuk or whatever. They're all figuring out how to weave in and out and they all accommodate for each other. It's a wonderful culture here,” he said.

Draper is invested in some of the biggest tech upstarts like Baidu, Tesla, SpaceX, Coinbase, Skype, Robinhood and Hotmail. The veteran early stage investor is visiting six cities. including Mumbai, Bengaluru, Delhi, Odisha, Goa and Hyderabad, on his current India trip to scout for innovative early stage startups in collaboration with TiE Mumbai.

Bengaluru, India's most prominent tech hub, is infamous for its traffic congestion and poor infrastructure that keep commuters trapped for hours on roads every day. On a weekday this October, when the city’s tech corridor Outer Ring Road (ORR) faced heavy traffic congestion, leaving motorists stranded were for hours due to rain and waterlogging.

On the brighter side, this had also led to the city’s traffic police integrate the latest AI and technology into their systems. In September, to keep an eye on errant motorists through AI, the police had expanded its AI-based enforcement system to detect 13 violations, up from the existing seven.

In terms of innovation, the traffic police in the city has been among the pioneers in using AI for traffic enforcement. In 2023 alone, 97 percent of traffic violation cases (87.4 lakh out of 90 lakh) were booked through contactless mode. Bengaluru has a 14,000 km road network, a population of 14 million, 12 million registered vehicles, and 40,000 traffic intersections.

Read the full interview: China will flatline, India to cross China pretty quickly: Legendary investor Tim Draper on Trump, Elon Musk, Bitcoin