‘Start-up Silicon Valley Bridge’ to be set up in K’taka

PTI, Nov 20, 2021, 12:22 PM IST

Bengaluru: ”Start-up Silicon Valley Bridge’ will be set up in Karnataka to help skilled employees of the state to work for start-ups located in the US’ Silicon Valley, which are facing human resource shortage,” informed Minister for Electronics, IT, BT and S&T, Higher Education, Skill Development, Entrepreneurship and Livelihood C.N. Aswath Narayan.

In his valedictory address at the 24th edition of the ‘Bengaluru Tech Summit-2021’ (BTS) here, the minister said the bridge will also serve as a connection between start-ups of both the countries enabling sharing of knowledge and other resources as part of the new initiative.

He also stated, ‘Beyond Bengaluru StartUp Grid’ will be set up to facilitate growth of emerging industries in other cities of the state outside Bengaluru.

Taking a cue from the success story of India’s leading stock broking company Zerodha, a homegrown fintech venture, Dr. Narayan announced the constitution of a fin-tech task force to attract investments in the financial sector.

He said the government plans to set up a Centre of Excellence (CoE) and a back office in Mangaluru for the purpose.

Similarly, an entrepreneur has evinced interest in setting up an electric battery manufacturing unit at Hubballi, he said.

The minister said the BTS 2021 has attracted investments to the tune of more than Rs 5,000 crore in the aftermath of the announcement of the government’s new ESDM policy with industries evincing interest in setting up semiconductor plants, motors for air conditioners, solar cell units, and electric vehicle among others.

Notwithstanding the raging pandemic, Narayan said a million people had changed jobs in the last six months and another 4 lakh candidates were getting ready for employment.

He said for the first time, the government of Karnataka conducted pre-events in the cities of Mangaluru, Hubballi, and Mysuru in the run-up to the BTS 2021 to promote the concept of industries going beyond Bengaluru.

“Tech Summit was held in these clusters with strong participation notwithstanding the pandemic,” he said.

The minister said the government of Karnataka has received invitations from various participating countries in the BTS 2021 to visit their countries to further strengthen investment ties.

He said the Sydney Conclave and the Indo-US Conclave were successes as it saw the interaction between prime ministers of India and Australia and the US Consul General in Chennai.

Narayan also said the 25th edition (silver jubilee) of the BTS to be held in 2022 between November 16 and 18 will be bigger and better and all preparations will go to make it grand and successful than its previous editions.

(With inputs from IANS)