Ashwath Narayan says state working on setting up IT tech park, EV cluster in HDB region

The Karnataka government was making inroads into setting up an EV cluster, an IT tech park—similar to Bengaluru’s ITPL—in the Hubballi-Dharwad-Belagavi (HDB) cluster in coming days, state Minister of Electronics, Information Technology - Biotechnology, Science and Technology, Higher Education, Skill Development, Entrepreneurship and Livelihood C N Ashwath Narayan said on Monday.

The HDB IT tech park will have a 20,000-seat capacity and a start-up hub with a capacity of 5,000 seats. “A centre of excellence (CoE) in agri-tech is being developed in association with the University of Agricultural Sciences (UAS) in Dharwad. A CoE in artificial intelligence will be set up in Hubballi, in association with a local anchor institute. Incubator facilities for startups will be arranged at Indian Institute of Technology and Indian Institute of Information Technology in Dharwad,” he said.

Narayan was speaking at ‘Techceleration’, a pre-Bengaluru Tech Summit event under ‘Beyond Bengaluru’ initiative, organised in Hubballi on Monday by the Karnataka Digital Economy Mission (KDEM).

Stating that 120 among the 400 registered with the startup grid are from this region, the minister noted that the plan is to have 800 companies registered under the startup grid by the end of this fiscal, to which Rs 25 crore cluster seed fund would also be provided.

Under KDEM’s initiative, eight companies have come up in the region, creating 1,200 jobs in the last one year. Ten among 50 startups in the growth phase are considered as potential for investment, and they are expecting USD 100 million investment, Narayan said.

He also stressed the need to decentralise investment to other places in Karnataka to strengthen the digital economy, stating that the government is also encouraging mentorship, incubation and acceleration facilities.

Union Parliamentary Affairs Minister Pralhad Joshi stated that the mindset of investors and some bureaucrats have to be changed to facilitate more investment in places other than bigger cities like Bengaluru.

The Union government would extend all required help to improve infrastructure and connectivity in Tier-2 cities. Efforts are being made to introduce high-speed trains, to lay new railway lines, and to develop ports in the region, he said, announcing that a regular flight service between Hubballi and Delhi would begin soon.