BENGALURU: Karnataka is the most sought-after destination for global capability centres (GCC), with the presence of around 40% of GCCs in India, and it is ranked top in the country in terms of software exports, said IT/BT Minister Priyank Kharge on Monday.
Speaking at the Global Innovation Alliance (GIA) partners meeting, Priyank said that Karnataka’s share of software exports is over 40% of the country’s exports of $155 billion.
He said Bengaluru is the fourth largest technology cluster of the world and that Karnataka has the best skilled workforce in the world. “We need to be more resilient for the future and we need to ensure we are ready for the challenges for future innovations,” he added.
The 26th Edition of the Bengaluru Tech Summit (BTS) will be held from November 29 to December 1, and the minister said GIA partner countries will have specific focus on each sector at BTS. Besides knowledge and idea exchange, the summit will also focus on innovation and investments. GIA partner countries will host 16 sessions and witness representations from Australia, France, Israel, Japan, Switzerland, and the Netherlands.
Priyank also said that they have created centres of excellence for Deeptech, IoT, Cybersecurity, AgriInnovation, Data Science & AI, Aerospace, among others. “Now we are coming up with COEs for Health science & medical devices, manufacturing, automobile tech, a gaming accelerator and also a circular Economy lab,” he added.
This year BTS will also have a multi-track conference on IT and Electronics, deep tech, startups and Biotech, an international exhibition, the India-US Tech Conclave, B2B meetings, Unicorn felicitation, among others.
‘28% GST on online gaming will create chaos’
Kharge also said that he has written to Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on this issue (28% GST on online gaming), and has requested to relook as right now players are being lured away. “This leads to a lot of chaos,” he said, stressing on the need to have a dialogue with both the gaming industry and players. He said many players are now losing money and they can’t even be protected. “People are playing games on Chinese and Eastern European servers and losing money and we can’t even protect them,” he said. Following the GST Council’s decision to levy a 28% GST on online gaming revenue, five gaming start-ups have had to either lay off or shut operations.