The Hindu Business Line : BangaloreIT.in to focus on ‘Gateway to Asia’ theme

The Tenth Edition of BangaloreIT.in 2007, the five-day IT and telecom expo, will kick-off on October 29 with over 200 companies and delegations from about 20 countries participating in the event.

For the first time, the event focus has shifted from being Bangalore centric to leveraging the unique ICT ecosystem of the city and positioning it as the Gateway to Asia, said Karantaka’s IT and BT secretary, Mr M.N.Vidyashankar. With over 18 parallel tracks, five keynote addresses and five power panel discussions, the conferences are expected to attract over 1,000 delegates each day with various ICT companies and technocrats showing keen interest in the conferences, he said. Delegations from Germany, Australia, Canada, Sri Lanka, China, Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia, Russia, Korea, Japan and the UK among other countries will be participating in the event this year.

Inauguration

The Karnataka Governor, Mr Rameshwar Thakur, will be inaugurating the event, while the Union Minister of IT and Communication, Mr A. Raja, will participate in the event, which will be held at the Bangalore International Exhibition Centre (BIEC) on Tumkur Road.

Mr J. Parthasarathy, director, STPI Bangalore, said about 67 new companies set up their operations in Karnataka investing about Rs 1,000 crore in the first six months of the current financial year, which is on par with that of corresponding last year. Of the 67 companies about 35 were foreign companies, mainly developing software products, he said.

STPI-Bangalore is targeting IT exports of $18 billion for FY07-08 (about Rs 70,000 crore) as compared to $12 billion (Rs 52,000 crore) achieved in the previous year.

A unique feature of this year’s event would be the launch of computer skills proficiency test in Karnataka by the State Government in collaboration with MeritTrac, a skills assessment company.

The test will assess the keyboard skills and PC skills like windows functions, MS Word, MS Excel and e-mail proficiency tests of students, Mr Vidyashankar said.