‘Local leadership lacking for promoting IT sector’

Co-Founder and Chairman of Aarin Capital T.V. Mohandas Pai and Chairman of State Vision Group on Information Technology Kris Gopalakrishnan said here on Friday that the Information Technology sector has not flourished in Mangaluru region due to lack of local leadership.

Delivering the keynote address at the inauguration of Mangaluru Technovanza organised by Karnataka Digital Economy Mission (KDEM), Mr. Pai said that Mangaluru region has enormous human capital. Productivity of the people is also very high. It has highly educated people, a great work ethic. But lack of local leadership to promote the IT sector is a drawback.

Mr. Pai, who was earlier associated with the IT major Infosys, said that when Infosys opened its unit in Mangaluru in 1995 there was no eco system conducive for the growth of the IT sector. “We worked without electricity connection for 10 years and our unit (Infosys) depended on generators,” he said, pointing out the fact that the situation has not improved much even now.

Mr. Pai suggested that the State Government set up a seed fund of ₹1,000 crore for promoting IT sector in the State, especially in tier II cities. The government can contribute ₹600 crore and the remaining can come from other agencies, including from the Union Government and SIDBI.

Start-ups in clusters should be encouraged with such funds in tier-2 centres such as Mangaluru.

He also suggested that the government set up Centres of Excellence in the areas of artificial intelligence, machine learning, robotics, etc., across the State. Colleges having such centres should be provided with capital grants of ₹1 crore each for the next five years to set them up, he said.

Mr. Pai asked people from the region to focus on areas such as biotechnology as there are many medical colleges. These institutions have research laboratories and also huge amount of clinical material.

He suggested that the government set up a biotech incubator in the region so that it will encourage students from these institutions to take up research.

Mr. Gopalakrishnan suggested that hubs for financial services and healthcare sectors can be set up in Mangaluru region as it has good amount of resources in these fields.

Chairman of Karnataka Digital Economy Mission B.V. Naidu spoke.

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