Conversation, all day
Ordering food, asking directions, talking with the people you live alongside. The phrase you learned this morning gets used the same evening.
Cultural & language study in India
Study in Bangalore.
Live the culture.
We run cultural and language study programmes here in Bangalore for participants coming from outside India — mainly from Japan. Participants take language lessons by day and share a residence with people from around the world, meeting Indian music, dance and food as part of ordinary life rather than as a tour. Stays run from two weeks to six months.
Who we are
SUNLIGHT YELLOW OVERDRIVE is a company based in Bangalore, run by a team working across India and Japan. Our main business is hosting visitors from outside India — mainly from Japan — for stays of two weeks to six months, built around the language and the culture of this place.
Around it sit three more: training for companies from overseas, trade between the two countries, and IT services. All of it comes back to the same thing — bringing India and the countries our participants come from closer together.
What we do
Cultural & language study
Visitors from outside India spend a few weeks or months living and learning in Bangalore.
Corporate training
Programmes in Bangalore for companies from overseas.
Trade
Coffee and other goods, moving between India and Japan.
IT services
Development and ongoing support, IT education, consulting.
Inside the programme
English here is not a subject on a timetable. It is how the day runs — in class, at the dinner table, in the lift on the way out. The culture comes the same way: not as an excursion, but as the ordinary shape of the day.
- Everyday language lessons
- Lessons run at a school we have visited and vetted, in a small group of people from many countries. What gets covered is the conversation you will need that evening, not a syllabus to work through.
- The local languages, not only English
- Bangalore's own language is Kannada, and Hindi and Tamil are never far away. Participants pick up greetings, numbers and the phrases the shops and the auto drivers actually use — enough that the city starts answering back.
- Music and cooking
- Alongside the lessons, the days take in what this city does well — Indian music, and cooking with the food it belongs to. Learned from the people who do them, rather than from a textbook.
- Yoga, dance and training
- Mornings can start with yoga and evenings end with Bollywood dance, and personal training runs alongside both — qualified trainers and well-equipped gyms are not hard to find here. A culture is picked up with the body as much as the head, and it is the quickest way into a room of people you have not met.
- The rest of India, when it fits
- Bangalore is one city in a very large country. Where the dates allow, stays take in trips further out — the Taj Mahal and the other World Heritage sites, or Nagpur, where the Buddhism of modern India took its present shape.
- A neighbouring country, if you want one
- The Maldives, Dubai and Thailand are all short flights from here, and some participants add one to the end of a stay. Seeing what a neighbour does differently makes what is particular to India easier to see, and the English learned in Bangalore is what carries you through the trip. Tell us early and we will work out how it fits.
- A residence, not a dormitory
- You live alongside engineers, entrepreneurs and young professionals who have come to Bangalore from all over. The shared kitchen and lounge are where the day's lesson actually gets used.
- Two weeks to six months
- Short stays start at two weeks, and every stay we host finishes within six months. The length is set around what each participant is here for.
- Open to anyone
- There is no entrance test, no level to reach first and no background you need to have. Beginners join the same way as everyone else, and the pace follows whoever is in the room.
- Our own staff on the ground
- Airport pick-up, help settling in, and regular check-ins from staff who live here. Japanese-speaking support is available throughout. Our office is on MG Road, in the middle of the city.
These are short stays rather than a course of study. There is no enrolment and no examination, nothing here leads to a qualification, diploma or certificate of completion, and every stay finishes within six months. We are a private company hosting visitors to Bangalore — not a university or an accredited institution — and the days are for language, culture and ordinary life here.
We also handle long-term study at universities and other accredited institutions in India. That is a separate arrangement from the stays described here — please get in touch.
Life outside the classroom
The music, the dance, the food — as much of what people come here for as the language itself. Each of these is part of daily life in Bangalore, not a staged activity.
Music
Indian music has its own rhythm and scale. You hear it up close — at gatherings, at temples, on the street.
Dance
Classical and folk dance carry much of India's storytelling. Watching closely, and joining in, is a quick way into the culture.
Personal training
Personal training is popular in Bangalore, and the standard is high — qualified trainers, well-equipped gyms, and a price that makes it easy to keep going. A good number of our participants end up training several times a week while they are here.
Food and cooking
South Indian food is regional, seasonal and built on spice. Eating it off a banana leaf teaches you as much as any lesson.
Why Bangalore
Of all the cities in India, Bangalore is the easiest place to spend your first months.
- India's technology capital
- Global companies have their offices here, and people arrive from every state to work. That is who you end up living and studying alongside.
- Comfortable all year
- At around 900 metres above sea level, the city stays mild through the year — far gentler than the Indian summer people picture.
- Calm for a large Indian city
- Security cameras and guards are common in residential areas, and a broad middle class makes the city steadier than its reputation suggests.
- The Garden City
- Bangalore is known for its parks and tree-lined streets. For a few weeks each spring the roads turn pink with blossom.
Corporate training
Training for companies from overseas, mainly Japan, held here in Bangalore. Not English studied in a classroom, but English used all day — in class, in the field, and back at the residence.
Does this sound familiar?
Classroom training does not carry over
Staff study the language at home, then never quite use it. You want somewhere it has to be used.
Language training alone is not enough
You want teamwork and decision-making in a culture that is not your own, on top of the English.
You want to lift engagement
You want to give younger staff an experience they cannot get at home, and see it change how they work.
How the programme runs
Language school by day, fieldwork by afternoon
Mornings at a language school with participants from many countries; afternoons walking the city — local markets, neighbourhoods, companies.
Evenings at the residence
Staff stay in a residence shared with people working for top global companies. Dinner and conversation are part of the training.
India as it is
The energy of a fast-growing economy, and the realities beside it. Working with people whose assumptions differ from your own is the point.
Length, content and group size are designed around what each company needs. Small groups are welcome.
Other things we do
Beyond the study programme and corporate training, we run two businesses connecting India and the countries our participants come from.
Trade between India and Japan
Coffee among other goods, moving between the two countries. Karnataka — the state Bangalore belongs to — is India's largest coffee-growing region. Please get in touch for details.
IT services
Web and mobile applications, custom systems on platforms such as AWS and GCP, and ongoing support once they are running. We also do IT education and training, and digital consulting — all from the same team.
About us
Vision
We are a team working across India and Japan, and what we do is connect the two. We bring people here to live and study, we take companies from overseas into the field, and we move goods and software between the two countries.
Our strength is teamwork, and our belief is that all are equal. Every project, big or small, matters the same to us. We look closely at what the people we work with actually want, and we stay with it until they are satisfied.
The IT side of the business is a part of what we do rather than the whole of it — the engineering arm of a company whose work is, above all, about bringing two countries closer together.
From the CEO
I came to Bangalore in my twenties, after six years as an engineer in Japan. I studied English and IT here, then spent time inside a local IT company. What I took from that year was far larger than I had expected, and it is the reason this company runs a study programme at all. Today I run one company in each country, work closely with engineers across Asia and the Middle East, and still write code myself.
Kenichi UsamiCEO & Co-founder
Team
Kenichi Usami
CEO & Co-founder
I moved to Bangalore in my twenties and have worked between India and Japan ever since. I also serve as CTO, with over 15 years in the IT industry.
Ganapathi
Co-founder
I execute a key role in business strategy and have many years of experience in the field.
Ryota Hatanaka
Director
As a director, I oversee management and design, leveraging years of experience to drive growth and innovation.
Abinaya
Lead Engineer
Responsible for system architecture and optimization in the developer team.
Get in touch
If you would like to know more, please get in touch.