Uma Bondada vividly recalls the time she shifted to Belagavi , a city in north Karnataka , 500 km from Bengaluru . “It didn’t stop raining for three months, till September. People still speak about the monsoon of 2006,” says Bondada, cofounder of embedded software tool provider Vayavya Labs. She and her husband had just relocated from the US and the relentless rain and the difficulty in finding a good house in the city of 6,00,000 nearly made her regret their decision to shift. But, 10 years down the line, they are glad they stuck it for the sake of Vayavya Labs, which got $1 million from Indian Angel Network in 2011.“Two of our cofounders are from here and I had also worked here for 13 years earlier as a professor. We knew that the burn rate would be much less than in a big city,” says Bondada’s husband and Vayavya chief architect Venugopal Kolathur. Since they were developing the software from scratch, there was no real need to be based in Bengaluru, he adds.Belagavi, a former British cantonment, which is the headquarters of the Maratha Light Infantry Regiment and which Karnataka is promoting as the state’s second capital, seemed a better alternative. Good infrastructure , improving internet speed and an airport with flights to and from Bengaluru also helped.Abhishek Latthe, cofounder of wearable devices startup SenseGiz, also zoomed in on his hometown of Belagavi as the headquarters for his company, which exports 80% of its products to the US and Japan. “We considered Bengaluru, but since most of our sales were overseas, it didn’t make much of a difference where we were located,” says Latthe, 28. SenseGiz, set up in 2013, has sold 35,000 units of its flagship product Find, which lets you keep track of the object it is attached to (or even your pet) via your phone’s Bluetooth. It has snagged $5,00,000 in pre-series A funding from Karnataka Semiconductor Venture Capital Fund.Four-hundred kilometres to the south, in the coastal town of Udupi , Rohith Bhat, Robosoft’s founder, had a very pragmatic reason for shifting from Mumbai. “There were two reasons. In the first two years of our business, we never saw our customers even once. So there was no reason to continue in Mumbai.Also, in those days, VC funding was difficult and I knew I’d never get a bank loan in Mumbai. Since I hail from Udupi, I knew I could get it here,” says Bhat. From its initial business of being a developer for Apple, Robosoft has seen resounding success in building mobile apps and games. Last year, the firm raised $12 million from Ascent Capital and Kalaari Capital.While Bengaluru continues to be the startup capital both in terms of the number of startups and funding, other pockets in Karnataka such as Belagavi and Hubballi-Dharwad in the north, Udupi and Mysuru are seeing some traction, albeit at a slower pace. At least a few have secured funding, while incubator cells have come up to foster entrepreneurship in these cities, such as Deshpande Foundation’s Sandbox in Hubballi, which has also opened a branch in Belagavi.The Indus Entrepreneurs also has a chapter in Hubballi, apart from Bengaluru. Entrepreneurs who chose to headquarter their ventures from these cities invariably have strong personal ties with that particular place. The biggest lure is almost always the slower burn rate of capital. “I was clear I didn’t want to take VC funds, having seen the effect in Silicon Valley.And I can survive for much longer with the same amount of money in Belagavi,” says Hitesh Dharamdasani, founder of network security startup Informant Networks. Dharamdasani was with Silicon Valley-based firm FireEye for two years before deciding to strike out on his own from his hometown.With 25 customers in eight months, consultation work for the state police department, and plans to expand to more cities later in the year, the 26-year-old has no intention of shifting to Bengaluru. “That’s the whole point: to be headquartered here and have support offices where we have our customers,” he says.The talent pool, especially from local colleges, is another big attraction, whether it’s Belagavi with eight engineering colleges or Udupi, with the Manipal Institute of Technology and the National Institute of Technology in Surathkal in the vicinity. “I think the most underrated factor about Mysuru is the talent available here,” says Raghu Srinivas, founder of automated drop-shipping platform Blu Ember, set to launch soon from the city, 120 km from Bengaluru.If the company is working in a niche area, talent also comes to them through lateral hiring. Pradeep Singh, a native of Rajasthan, says he did not mind shifting to Belagavi after his engineering degree because of the work he would get to do at SenseGiz. “I liked the product and contacted them, and they hired me,” he says.Others spot opportunity in local markets. Like Jeethesh Shah, who launched Belagavi’s first food-tech venture, FoodBuddy. The company, which processes 60 orders a day, broke even in eight months and is close to completing a year of operations. “I had the first-mover advantage and signed exclusivity contracts with a few hotels.” says Shah, who is looking to raise his first round of capital to fund expansion. But local markets can also come with its brand of problems.Shah, for instance, had an attrition crisis when his delivery executives did not want to deliver food to their relatives. “They had to quit because of family pressure. So I replaced them with college students from other states, who could work part-time.”A common challenge when starting up outside Bengaluru, though, is a lack of good mentors and networking opportunities. “The right mentor might have told us how to pitch our product, how to position ourselves and market it, which took us years to realise,” says Vayavya’s Bondada. “If we knew someone else who had executed a methodology change, which is essentially what we are attempting, he would have told us it would take 10 years.We estimated four,” says Kolathur. “Once we see more startups from these places getting funded, I think we would see a trickledown effect,” says Srikrishna Ramamoorthy, partner at Unitus Seed Fund, which actively scouts for startups in smaller cities. Cities like Mysuru and Belagavi might then emerge as feasible alternatives to Bengaluru, beset by infrastructure woes, rising pollution and cost of living.