Events
‘Hubballi Cluster Venture Fund’ garners funding in the ESDM sector
The Government of Karnataka announced that the ‘Hubballi Cluster Venture Fund’ has garnered investor interest of INR 300 crores in the Electronics System Design & Manufacturing (ESDM) sector. Further, the top 10 of the 30 growth-stage start-ups in the Hubballi-Dharwad-Belagavi cluster have also received attention from investors.
Dr C N Ashwath Narayan, Minister for IT & BT, Science & Technology, Higher Education, Skill Development, Entrepreneurship & Livelihood, Government of Karnataka shared the blueprint for Beyond Bangalore initiative for the Hubballi-Dharwad-Belagavi (HDB) cluster with five mega pillars.
“We are proud to announce that Hubballi-Dharwad-Belagavi cluster in the last year has seen a cumulative revenue of INR 1,400 crores. We have received investment interests of INR 300 crores in the ESDM sector alone. I am thrilled to see KDEM’s initiative to bring entrepreneurs, industry, academia, and government together, and the momentum for Beyond Bengaluru building up and becoming a reality,” said Dr Narayan.
They are a 500-acre EV industrial zone with a target to have a common centre for testing, validation and certification, an iconic world-class infrastructure that will house 5,000 start-ups, a plug-n-play factory for engineering and manufacturing setup and five centres of excellence to boost training, R&D, innovation, and entrepreneurship and an IT Tech Park.
The centres of excellence will be set up as a Global Emerging Technology Design Center at Belagavi at the cost of INR 150 crore.
The announcements were made at Techceleration 2022, a two-day event conducted by Karnataka Digital Economy Mission (KDEM) to bring together industry leaders, policymakers, the R&D community, and representatives from start-ups to ignite the next wave of development from the Beyond Bengaluru cluster of HDB. Techceleration 2022 is also a pre-cursor to the Karnataka Government’s Bengaluru Tech Summit 2022 to be held between 16-18 November.
As part of the Beyond Bengaluru program, KDEM will also be hosting regional shark tanks and Women at Work initiatives at cluster markets to provide opportunities to start-ups and women-led platforms. More than 200 women participated at Techceleration to inspire women to join the workforce in corporate and entrepreneurship with their stories.
The Karnataka Digital Economy Mission (KDEM) is a vision group that works with trade associations to implement new policies around various industries including start-ups. To further the cause of keeping Karnataka ahead in IT, BT and S&T, KDEM provides feedback on policy initiatives needed to attract investments, acts as a bridge between the government and the industry, and builds a comprehensive strategy. The KDEM has helped the state with investments in IT/ITeS by helping structure promotional efforts abroad, helping position Karnataka well with technology-sector-specific investment reports, and sponsoring and organizing research to uncover technology opportunities.
