Bengaluru needs better infrastructure to be a global tech hub: Industry

Speaking at the Carnegie India summit, industry leaders stated that while Bengaluru has performed well on its own to become a massive technology hub for the country, it needs more investments from the central government to help it compete with global tech hubs.

They stated that there have also been significant efforts to extend Bengaluru’s tech ecosystem to the entire State as a whole to create a rich pool of talent in the region making it a global innovation hub and the tech and business collaboration with government in Bengaluru needs to be replicated across states to achieve similar results.

“We need to create a true Silicon Valley while the city continues to have a strained infrastructure. We are just not realizing the huge potential that we have created right here out of Bengaluru. But if you ask any of these unicorns and young entrepreneurs. need access to capital which needs to be urgently addressed,” said Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw, executive chairperson of Biocon.

She added that policymakers need to understand that nothing happens without investment which the government of Karnataka has systematically done in creating all opportunities. While other states need to replicate the collaboration between state and technology- business leadership in the state, she stated that Bengaluru has already reached a level of growth which needs to be accelerated further through increased policy intervention. Such measures also need to be taken to prevent the brain drain of innovative startups to more conducive global startup hubs, she said.

Former Infosys Director TV Mohandas Pai suggested creating a Rs 500,000 crore fund for R&D and startup funding apart from creating world class tech infrastructure closer to the Bengaluru airport complete with high speed corridors to help decongest the city. He added that more policy intervention is also needed to attract global companies to Bengaluru and develop the electric vehicle policy further to enhance the ecosystem for the industry.

“ Bengaluru needs to have a vision document. We have to also interact with the major Global hubs to make sure they know what we are doing. So they feel they have to associate with us or they’re going to lose out,” he said.

In a separate study released today, Gartner Inc. found that by 2023, at least 85% of governments without a total experience (TX) strategy will fail to successfully transform government services. Governments that continue to focus on citizen and employee experience initiatives separately will miss out on essential synergies to effectively transform their services. Gartner predicts that 75% of governments will have at least three enterprisewide hyper automation initiatives launched or underway by 2024. In particular, benefits such as improved business agility and improved employee productivity gained over the last two years from remote access and automation of tasks will advance this strategy.

“Growth of Bengaluru will pull the entire country along,” he stated.

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