Set up ₹1,000-crore seed fund to boost IT ecosystem across Karnataka: Mohandas Pai

The IT industry veteran TV Mohandas Pai has urged the Karnataka government to set up a seed fund of ₹1,000 crore to boost the information technology ecosystem across the State, especially in tier-2 cities such as Mangaluru.

Inaugurating the ‘Mangaluru Technovanza’, which was organised by the Karnataka Digital Economy Mission (KDEM) under the ‘Beyond Bengaluru’ initiative on Friday, he said the government can contribute ₹600 crore and the remaining from other agencies.

With this initiative, the government can create around 6 lakh high quality jobs across the State in two years. The start-up in clusters should be encouraged with such funds in tier-2 centres such as Mangaluru.

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He also asked the government to set up Centres of Excellence in the areas of artificial intelligence, machine learning, robotics, etc., across the State. The colleges having such CoE should be provided with capital grants of ₹1 crore each for next five years to set up CoE, he said.

Stating that Mangaluru has enormous quantum of human capital, he said the region is an education centre. It has highly educated people, a great work ethic, and high productivity. He asked the people from the region to focus on the areas such as biotechnology as it has many medical colleges. These institutions have got research labs and have huge amount of clinical materials.

He suggested that the government set up a biotech incubator in the region so that it will encourage students from these institutions take up research. He opined that the lack of local leadership is the main reason for Mangaluru region not getting the prominence in technology sector.

Urging the local leadership to come forward to make Mangaluru region for the development of technology sector, Kris Gopalakrishnan, Chairman of the Karnataka Vision Group on Information Technology, suggested that the hubs for the financial services and healthcare sectors can be set up in Mangaluru region as it has good amount of resources in these sectors.

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CN Ashwath Narayan, Karnataka Minister for IT, BT and ST and Higher Education, said that the government will work on setting up a Centre of Excellence in Fintech in Mangaluru. “To promote IT and BT sectors, the government is encouraging the entrepreneurs with incentives if they set up their units in tier-2 towns of the State,” he said.

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