BENGALURU: Industries Minister MB Patil and Electronics & IT/BT Minister Priyank Kharge on Wednesday said several US companies have expressed interest to invest around Rs 25,000 crore in Karnataka.
Addressing a joint press conference, along with senior officials from the Industries and IT/BT departments, the ministers said some of the companies are in the process of investing around $1 billion in the state. While some firms have planned to start their operations in the state, some have proposed to expand their existing operations.
During their visit to the US, the ministers held meetings with Applied Materials, AMD, Juniper, Global Foundries, LAM Research, Boeing, Krypton, Dell, MKS Instruments, GE Healthcare, Intelsat, RTX, Teradyne, Texas Instruments, Apple, Leolabs, Fictiv, and T-Second.
Discussions primarily focused on semiconductors, aerospace and defence, electric vehicles, space, and precision manufacturing, said Patil. Kharge said the purpose of the visit to the US was to attract investment at a time when not only China, but even other states within the country are competing with each other to attract investors.
The IT/BT minister said the government is tying up with AMD to train engineers, based on the syllabus provided by the company, to meet their requirements for human resources, and AMD will be hiring 800 engineers in India.
“During our discussions, we offered all possible support to the companies to invest in Karnataka and briefed the Global CXOs about the state’s ease of doing business, favourable sectoral policies, competitive incentives, and available industrial infrastructure and talent pool in the state. Our main objective was to showcase Karnataka as an attractive investment destination,” said Kharge. He also held a meeting with professors from Stanford Bio Design, who showed interest in working on setting up a COE on med-tech.