They're carting away the coke machines. The cafeterias no longer serve tom yum soup if there are cafeterias left at all. This is an age of pink slips and cutbacks. The fallout of Silicon Valley's nuclear winter has reached Bangalore, but it isn't something most of the wary whiz kids want to talk about. Are they in denial? Or can they cope?

A Venkatesha Babu

I feel distinctly vulturine as I set out. my editor's instructions were clear: ''I want a fear-and-loathing-in-Bangalore kinda piece,'' said the prematurely-old voice (that's what he was to me, a voice, nothing more). ''That shouldn't be difficult in this tech-autumn.''

I didn't quite agree with the man but didn't say anything. I knew several companies that feared the tech-slump would herald their end. I also knew they would loath me if I questioned them about their troubles. So much for gonzo journalism. Well, I didn't become a journalist to win popularity contests.

To continue with the trend of using animal-adjectives, S. Ramakrishnan's behaviour is distinctly struthionine (ostrich-like). The President of Savantech, a company that contributed the word d-commerce-it stands for digital content commerce and never mind if you haven't heard of it; it hasn't caught on-to the local technology lexicon, would have everyone believe that things aren't that bad.

''We are exploring certain projects that are at the preliminary stage.'' My mind flips to the conversation I had with a rather unimpressive security man who doubles up as the front office of Savantech.

The receptionist, said the uniform, had been asked to go. ''Do you think the company will survive? I am worried about my job.'' Ramakrishnan, sipping Diet Coke from a can, now takes the high ground.

''We are surprised a publication of your stature is more interested in spreading the bad news instead of helping us.'' That's difficult when the world isn't buying into d-commerce.

''The entire sector is suffering. Yes, we have economised on several things,'' says Ramakrishnan. ''After the initial investment of half-a-million dollars we haven't been able to raise anything.''

That could explain the air of somnolence about the company's 6,000-square feet office. I remember having passed a few employees playing Solitaire desultorily on my way to Ramakrishnan's room. But that's no measure of how the company is doing-heck, I get in a quick game or two of Doom at work everyday.

By now Ramakrishnan has decided that what this writer needs is an iron hand; he hints darkly at lawsuits. Actually, the Diet Coke sort of fits in with these lean, mean days. ''Initially it was free Coke and pizzas for all, and TGIF bashes,'' reminisces a former executive of Savantech. ''Then reality set in.''

That, it did, in not just Savantech, but tens of other tech hotshops in Bangalore. The draught beer is flat. The Coke dispensers are gone. Free pizzas (or idlis) are a happy memory. And the tech dream has withered greatly. Walk through the streets of Bangalore and you will witness a summer of corruption.

See that building on the way to the airport. That's where Purple Yogi had its offices. The company sacked several people recently.

Remember that tall building on the road leading to the airport. Aditi/Talisma is located there. That's right, this is the company founded by Pradeep Singh, formerly of McKinsey and Microsoft. It denies having laid off anyone, but there has been some ''rationalisation of employees''.

And if you are more an anecdotes-not a fact-flotsam-person, read on:

Employees at one of the many tech-hopefuls promoted by the Microland Group come into work one morning to discover that the Coke machine in the cafeteria is gone. Then lunch, normally an elaborate affair with employees picking from three cuisines-Thai, Chinese, and Indian-is cancelled. A poker-faced HR exec holds a meeting of employees to tell them that the cafeteria staff, and some employees from the marketing, public relations, and software departments are being ''released''. The next morning, this harbinger of freedom discovers that the company wants him to go too.

At another hotshop, which set out to change the network paradigm, the brass had to sell off and lease part of their chrome-and-glass offices just to free up cash and pay employees. Anyway, there aren't many employees to be paid. Most of them have either been sacked or have left in search of greener pastures.

Living with the malaise: what malaise?

So far, I had come across some fear, no loathing, and lots of denial. I was seeing tech CEOs in an entirely new light. Yes, things were bad. But, no, their companies were not in trouble; it was only the competition that was hanging on for dear life. The word ''layoff'' was a red flag of sorts. One CEO, Anand Sudarshan of Planetasia, wants an exact definition of the term before commenting on his company's downsizing.

Another, Jyotirmoy Bose of Purple Yogi India, admits that people have been asked to leave but adds that ''this was purely on the basis of performance''.

Trigyn Technologies, builder of ''application integration services'' admits-the only listed company to do so publicly, so let's give it credit-that it has asked 10 per cent of its 700-strong workforce to go. But some of the people laid off insist the figure is closer to 30-35 per cent.

It isn't surprising to encounter this wave of denial.

What did I expect CEOs to say? Yes, we are doing badly. No, it's not because of market dynamics but because we hyped things up. Of course, we are laying people off.

What is surprising is the profile of companies being affected. No one, it would appear, is safe: from the rare makers of packaged software to the ubiquitous pure-play software services companies, everyone has been burnt by the tech flameout.

It's a pity this had to happen in my town. Bangalore didn't go the dotcom way like Mumbai or even neighbouring Chennai; it went tech with a vengeance. The entrepreneurial wave that started in 1998, revolved around technology, not content, and certainly not communities.

But, as these start-ups are discovering, a great technological USP and an impressive pedigree of defection capital means little when the hype comes crashing down. Srini Rajam, the former CEO of Texas Instruments' Indian ops, and the man behind Ittiam Systems, a high-end Digital Signal Processing solutions company, admits things are tough: ''From both a financial and a marketing point of view the scenario is bleak. But this is a great opportunity for the men to distinguish themselves from the boys.''

Vinay Sanjay URS who runs a search firm, Plakon, recommends that all claims by companies about how ingeniously they are handling the tech squeeze be taken with a barrel of salt: ''Companies like Cisco, Nortel, and Intel are cutting jobs by the thousands. How can Indian software companies whose main market lies in the US, expect not to be hurt in the resulting melee? The larger companies with several clients spread across continents may till be able to get away, but the smaller companies will find the going very tough.'' Phew!

Surviving the trough of disillusionment

There's no denying the fact that most companies and venture capitalists are in the trough, a neat phrase constructed by consulting firm Gartner in 1998, to explain the evolution of new technologies. It all begins with the highs of a peak of inflated expectations, the lows of the trough of disillusionment, and continues on the upward gradient of a slope of enlightenment to the destination, a plateau of productivity.

''Venture capitalists have swung from one extreme of issuing blank cheques to the other of demanding cash flows even when the project hasn't taken off,'' rues G. Mohan, the CEO of Ionic Systems, builders of home gateways for broadband access. Mohan's company didn't have any problem with its first round of funding, but it must now brace for its second-round in a distinctly tightfisted market.

It doesn't take a management consultant to figure out what companies need to do: increase revenues and reduce costs. The first is well nigh impossible in a depressed market; the second is in the realm of the achievable. Workforce can be pruned; salaries, cut; and travel budgets, frozen.

The emphasis on slashing unnecessary costs will help introduce some form of austerity into work practices that were starting to look almost Bacchanalian. The days of almost-free, or free, Tom Yum soup at company kitchens are coming to a close.

Still, incrementalism can only take a company that far. The real thrust will come from a radically new business model. That's what Unimobile-formerly Gray Cell, which gave India its first boom-time poster boy, Rajesh Reddy-has done. The company abruptly terminated its free two-way SMS (Short Messaging Service), which lets users communicate with each other through PCs, mobile phones, and Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs). ''This is in line with our decision to focus on enterprise customers like telecom carriers,'' says Unimobile's CEO Vas Bhandarkar. The million-odd users who used the service were the ideal consumer community on which the company tested its offering, but they added nothing to Unimobile's revenue streams.

Plain-vanilla tech companies will find it difficult to scale Gartner's slope of enlightenment. For them, the trough of disillusionment could well be a pit of despair. References to Dante apart, only those companies that build a unique differential, clubbing technology and service into a compelling bundle, can hope to succeed.

Should we mourn for the tens of failed ventures that already dot the Bangalore landscape? Or should we hold our grief for the hundred other ventures that will surely fail? Grieving would be out of place.

The casualties aren't significant: some tens of millions of squandered capital; a few hundred bruised egos; a small but perceptible dip in the demand for khakis, mobile phones, and canned drinks; and the end of a glorious period of irrational exuberance.

The companies that survive the trough will emerge stronger. Those that don't will engender several start-ups. And these survivors will be managed by men wise in the ways of venture capitalists, technology cycles, and the world at large. Already, Nirmal Ranka, the promoter of Cybertech Software, a systems integrator that went belly-up in March 2001, is talking about his next venture, a company in the networking and wireless domain space.

And yes, this time around, he promises to be more circumspect with the Coke.

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