BENGALURU: Founders of Karnataka-based start-ups will visit Germany’s Berlin early next year, followed by Netherlands and Australia, under the Global Innovation Alliance Market Access Programme (GIA-MAP) that was launched at the Bengaluru Tech Summit on Tuesday.
The initiative, launched by the Department of Information Technology, Biotechnology and Science & Technology (ITBT), Government of Karnataka, aimed at helping start-ups enter new markets, establish international tie-ups and increase global sales.
A batch of Germany-based start-ups is already taking part in the ongoing tech summit, in partnership with Berlin Senate-backed initiative Start-up Asia Berlin. They will take the opportunity to explore Indian markets from November 13 to December 3.
The pilot market access programme will enable the German companies to forge a deeper understanding of the markets and businesses in India during the three weeks.
“We have embarked on creating a system of global innovation alliance with innovation hubs of the world such as UK, USA, Israel, France and Germany. With start-up promotion as one of the key focus areas of our government, we are pleased to launch GIA-MAP to further engage with our international partners in this area. Bengaluru being the start-up capital, would pave the way for international start-ups to access the Indian markets via Bengaluru,” said EV Ramana Reddy, additional chief secretary, Department of ITBT.
Karnataka is also planning start-up exchanges with the Netherlands and Australia.
“With 20 per cent of the world’s workforce, India is a limitless market for Hardskills, which solves a big challenge of Industry 4.0 — how to train the entire workforce the hard-to-teach behaviours with skills such as critical thinking, agility, how to influence, collaborate and other modern business skills needed for high performance today. Hardskills is proud to be the pioneer in this bilateral project between Berlin and Bengaluru,” said Shoba Purshothaman, MD, Hardskills’s Berlin Hub.