Image for representational purposes.
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Bengaluru: In a push for its “Beyond Bengaluru” development initiative, the Karnataka government will finally have its plug and play facility or global technology centre (GTC) at Mysuru up and about next month.
Speaking at an event on Friday, the state’s IT/BT secretary, Ekroop Caur, added that the government is also pursuing its plan to set up similar facilities in cities such as Mangaluru and Hubli, to make them more attractive to foreign investors, who’ve been shying away from these smaller towns, despite the government’s efforts. “We still find that other cities have been shadowed out or are not developing at the pace they should have developed," she observed.
According to her department’s website. the GTC is being developed in collaboration with the Karnataka Digital Economy Mission (KDEM), while Karnataka Rural Infrastructure Development Limited (KRIDL) is taking the lead on civil and interior works, with a Rs 22-crore budget.
“The one in Mangaluru is a greenfield project and will take time as we still have to call for tenders. In Hubli, we are upgrading an existing project. The tender for it was floated 2-3 days ago,” she told DH.
The Mysuru project, incidentally, has been in the works for years, with the state’s previous IT/BT Minister CN Ashwath Narayan having announced it in October 2022, with a timeline for its completion given as February 2023. Even then, the proposal was for a 2 lakh square feet space with 3,000 seat capacity.
However, when the state’s IT/BT Minister Priyank Kharge announced the plug and play facilities in Karnataka’s tier-II and tier-III cities in November as part of the state’s GCC policy, the size envisioned then was much smaller with around 25-100 seats to begin with. However, the Mysuru GTC has stuck with the earlier plan.
“The facility is finally happening now. We started working on it since the end of last year, and currently, renovation is taking place. In the past one and a half years I have been in office, this has been the plan and we are on schedule. We began working on the tender and design process last year,” Caur told DH.
She also informed that the government’s deep tech fund, announced in the state Budget, is on course and would be introduced this year.
Priyank Kharge Minister for Information Technology & Biotechnology and Rural Development & Panchayat Raj speaking at the press conference of 27th Bengaluru Tech Summit 2024 organized by the Department of Electronics IT and Bt Government of Karnataka between November 19-21 2024 at the Bangalore Palace in Bengaluru on Saturday 16th November 2024. Ekroop Caur Secretary to Government Department of IT Bt and S&T seen.
Credit: DH Photo/ S K Dinesh