Pune

Pune is a city in the Indian state of Maharashtra, on the Deccan Plateau where the Mula and Mutha rivers meet. Long spelled Poona in English, it was the seat of the Peshwas, the chief ministers of the Maratha state, and its colleges gave it the name Oxford of the East.

Shivaji, founder of the Maratha kingdom, spent his boyhood in Pune at Lal Mahal, a palace his father Shahaji built for the family while he held the district as a fief. Bajirao I made the town his base in the 1720s, and Shaniwar Wada, the walled mansion of the Peshwas with its massive spiked gate, was finished early in the next decade. Pune passed to the British East India Company in 1818 and became the monsoon capital of the Bombay Presidency, when the governor moved here from Bombay for the rainy months.

Jyotirao and Savitribai Phule opened one of the first schools for girls run by Indians at Bhide Wada in 1848, and the university of the city is named after Savitribai. Bal Gangadhar Tilak edited his Marathi newspaper Kesari in Pune and turned the worship of Ganesh into a public festival in the 1890s; the Ganeshotsav still carries large painted idols through the streets of the old town to the river. The Film and Television Institute of India occupies the grounds of the former Prabhat Studios, which moved to Pune in the 1930s and made some of the first Marathi talkies.

The Serum Institute of India, founded in the city by Cyrus Poonawalla, makes vaccines against measles, polio and many other diseases. Bharat Forge belongs to the Kalyani Group and forges crankshafts and axle parts for truck and car makers. Persistent Systems has its head office in Pune and builds software products for other companies.