Bangalore will try and replicate Taiwan's innovation hub: State IT Secretary

28th March 2012
Bangalore will try and replicate Taiwan's innovation hub: State  IT Secretary
M.N Vidyashankar, Karnataka state government's Principal Secretary – IT & BT addresses the IT for SMEs conference in Bangalore, March 27 2012 ( IndiaTechOnline photo)

Bangalore, March 28, 2012: Taiwan's nodal agency for high tech applied research, Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI) may collaborate with the state government of Karnataka in India, to create a clone of itself in India's silicon city, Bangalore. A delegation from ITRI is likely to visit Bangalore in time for a formal announcement on the eve of Bangalore IT.Biz show in November this year, says M.N Vidyashankar, Karnataka state government's Principal Secretary – IT & BT.
He was speaking at the day-long Conference on “IT for SMEs - Success & Growth”, held in the city on Tuesday by the Bangalore Chamber of Industry and Commerce (BCIC) , in partnership with IT and media services company,Infinios.

Bangalore is the only city for which ITRI has agreed in principle to collaborate -- a testimony to the well-developed infrastructure for innovation here, Vidyashankar added. He pointed to the 38,000 PhDs in the city -- and nearly 400 R&D labs. This number would go up significantly when the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), the Defence R&D Organization (DRDO) , the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR), the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC) and the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) -- all commission their new R&D facilities in the northern reaches of the city -- thanks to over 6000 acres of land made available by the state government. In addition CENSE -- the Centre for Nanoscience and Engineering was already functioning in the IISc campus; and over 21 offers to participate had been received from global players for the proposed Nano Park in Bangalore -- Asia's largest such facility.

Other inputs at the conference included: A panel on "IT Applications Relevance for SME in the current market space", moderated by V N Bhattacharya, Strategy Consultant; a talk by Anant R Koppar, Past President, BCIC and Chairman & CEO, KTwo Technology Solutions on “Accelerate Your Business - Business Case for IT Solutions, Readiness Check”; a panel on "Business Software – On Premise Solutions" moderated by Shyaam Sundar, Chief Knowledge Officer, Ramco Systems; a panel on "Business Software – Cloud Software" moderated by Raghavan Subramanian, AVP, Infosys Technologies; Success Stories of Tech Savvy SMEs: Mekin Maheswari, President – Engineering, Flipkart.com &T G Dhandapani, CIO, TVS Group of Companies, Hosur and a talk on "IT solutions catering to specific SME industries”by Abhinay Choudari, Managing Director, Bigbasket.com.
Raghu Bhargava, Chairman, IT & ITES Expert Committee, BCIC, introduced the event and Navaneet Mishra, VP, Globalization Services, SAP Labs India, summed up at day's end.