South India has earned itself quite the reputation. It has a God's Own Country on the west coast, a Detroit on the east coast and a Silicon Valley in the middle.

To understand the true potential of South India, you can start by just looking at its film industries — breaking records has become passé here, whether it is Oscar-winning A. R. Rahman or larger-than-life superstar Rajinikanth. The mere variety and numbers can set your head spinning.

Robot became the biggest grosser of all time — the film made about Rs 60 crore in the first weekend alone. Rajinikanth even has fans in Japan, where his film Muthu became one of the first Tamil films to be dubbed in Japanese and released as Muthu Odoru Maharaja .

And we are just talking about Kollywood (Tamil film industry) here.

Sandalwood (Kannada film industry), Tollywood (Telugu film industry) and Mollywood (Malayalam film industry) have equally talented artists, impressive budgets and numbers at the Box Office.

How many cities can take pride on being so good at something, that the city becomes a word in the English dictionary?

And outsourcing is not Bangalore's only claim to fame.

The Silicon Valley of India offers first-class IT services, and has given the world people like Hotmail founder Sabeer Bhatia and Infosys's founder-chairman Narayana Murthy.

Kerala, the most literate State in India, boasts of the highest per capita income in the country and its enterprising people are found in every part of the globe.

But brain-power is not the only thing the State can boast of. Also known as God's Own Country, it offers something for every tourist — picture-perfect hill stations, beautiful backwaters and beaches.

Medical tourism is big in the South, with Chennai and Bangalore providing super-speciality healthcare at reasonable costs.

Hyderabad too has much more to offer other than delicious biryani, with a notable track record in IT and pharmaceuticals.

The Detroit of India, Chennai, has put the country on the global auto map. Hyundai, BMW, Nissan, Ford are just some of the car manufacturers that have operations in Chennai.

With the Indian auto market growing at 32.69 per cent in 2010, only next to China, Chennai feeds the country's growth… and the best is yet to come.

For the South, this is just the beginning.

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