Karnataka to provide support with transparency, ease of doing business in state: Minister

BANGALORE: India Electronics Week 2016 has started at the Bangalore International Exhibition Centre( BIEC) today, where R.V Deshpande, Karnataka Minister for Large and Medium Scale Industries  was the Chief guest.

Besides Deshpande, K.Ratnaprabha, Addl Chief Secretary of Karnataka, Commerce & Ind Depeartment and Arun Sachdeva, Addl Secretary, DeitY were present as guests of honour at the event.

Urging the audience to focus on investing not only in Bangalore but also other Business corridors across Karnataka, Deshpande shared that the government is very upbeat to provide support with transparency and ease of doing business.

He also emphasized that the government is doing its best to provide infrastructureand other resources to make Karnataka the Go To state for Electronics software and hardware manufacturing.

Speaking to the audience, Ratnaprabha said “I compliment EFY, ELCINA and other organisers to have put together such a great show and I wish them great success for the event.”

She further added “While Bangalore is the largest contributor to India’s IT solutions and services exports, there is still a lot to be done in the electronics hardware industry. Such events are a great platform for manufacturers, customers and other support groups to come together and work towards growing the business.

Addressing the guests, Vikram Desai, President ELCINA shared “The theme of India Electronics Week 2016 and ELCINA CEO SUMMIT is “Invest in India – the Multi Billion Dollar ESDM Opportunity.”

He further added “The cost of doing business in India in terms of compliance to various laws needs to be brought down to make manufacturing viable and attractive to entrepreneurs. On the other hand, the industry needs to demonstrate risk taking and risk mitigating ability required for investing, while adopting modern management practices and acquiring technologies to bring down the cost of manufacturing.”

Ramesh Chopra, Executive Chairman, EFY group shared “ India electronics Week has been trying to cover the whole eco-system of the electronics industry and trade in India and fill in the gaps left out by the others.”

He went on to add “Make in India, Incredible India, Smart cities , star-up, e-commerce…all these are surely going to attract lots of people and create new opportunities for young professionals. Already India seems to be doing much better them most other countries in the world, including China USA and Europe, in terms of GPD growth and we are very optimistic that the nos. will only grow in the coming years.”

IEW has for the first time brought together six events together under its umbrella namely; Electronics For You Expo (6th edition), Electronics Rocks (4th edition), Test & Measurement India (5th edition), LEDasia.in (1st edition), IoTshow.in (1st edition), Raksha India (1st edition).

Another highlight at the event is the defence conference where senior dignitaries from Centre for Artificial Intelligence and Robotics, DRDO, ISRO, HAL and MOE would be participating.

Special workshops will be held during 12^th and 13^th covering interesting subjects from “how to build a keyless start system for the cars to designing and learning the art of 3D printing!

At the Get funded session on 12^th Jan, experts will share their experiences and thoughts on how to make ideas and product into a success business model.

Startups such as Wagr: monitor & location tracker for pet dogs, Portuspine: wearable device to help working professionals who sit more than six hours a day to improve their posture etc. will be pitching to VC’s their ideas and business plans.

Some of the investors expected at the event are:

Abhishek Surendran; VC at Exfinity Venture Partners. Ticket size is US$ 1 million per startup.

A R Jayakumar; is the CEO of KITVEN fund. He handles Karnataka Semiconductor Venture Capital Fund (KARSEMVEN Fund), a SEBI registered Venture Capital Fund with target corpus of Rs 96.15 crore.

Vikram Vaidyanathan; Managing Director, Matrix Partners India. Matrix Partners India has about Rs 3000 crores under management and invests in companies primarily targeting the Indian market.

It was also shared that government of Karnataka and Depeartment of ITBT (Information Technology, Bio-technology and Science & Technology) has a Karnataka ESDM (Electronic System Design & Manufacturing) policy in place. They have recently announced the Karnataka start up policy which can be found at www.bangaloreitbt.in.