July Boys: New Global Players

July Boys focuses on a small ‘startup’ company in Bangalore that designs and produces software products for cellular service providers in Europe and the U.S. Turning the tables on the usual outsourcing story, July Systems has leveraged U.S.-based venture capital and Indian technical expertise to break into the latest high-tech markets.

The film explores the creation of a Silicon Valley-style work culture within this ‘cross-border’ company that has one leg in Bangalore and the other in Santa Clara, California. It also highlights the emergence of new kinds of identities (global, transnational, cosmopolitan) that incorporate and transcend pre-existing identities such as the national and the regional. But the narratives of the film’s characters reveal a tension between their assumed global subjectivity and their nationalist pride in July’s achievements as a company founded and run by Indians that makes ‘cutting edge products’ for the global market.

Gautam Sonti

GAUTAM SONTI is a freelance documentary filmmaker who does his own camerawork and editing. His method of filming lends itself to ethnographies of places and institutions and he has collaborated with anthropologists, sociologists, educators and social workers. He is particularly interested in filming institutions of science and technology.

CAROL UPADHYA received her Ph.D. from Yale University in social and cultural anthropology and is currently a visiting fellow at the National Institute of Advanced Studies (Bangalore). Her research interests include economic development and social change in India, globalization and entrepreneurship. She has published articles in the journals Economic and Political Weekly, Sociological Bulletin and Contributions to Indian Sociology and also in books published by Sage Publications and Rawat Publications.

Filmography: (Gautam Sonti)

Coding Culture (2006): Work culture in Bangalore based software companies.
Young Scientists (2004): Misconceptions about science amongst children.
Little Republics (2003): Misappropriation of power from elected representatives.
Disability and Discrimination (2001): Medicalisation and politics of disability.