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.
