Karnataka wants to create 4-5 more regions like Bengaluru, India's Silicon Valley, in the state, minister for electronics and information technology and biotechnology Priyank Kharge says.

Speaking at an event organized by IT industry body Nasscom, Priyank says he wants to position Karnataka not just as an investment destination, but also as a space for knowledge and skills.

Priyank, who spoke with Nasscom Chairman Debjani Ghosh at the Design Engineering Summit 2024, said this will bring more innovation to the country, and in the next four to five years, Karnataka will be innovating not only for India but also for the world.

Karnataka is the fourth largest technology cluster in the world and leads India in many fields. The southern state of Karnataka is home to more than one-third of India's technology talent pool, nearly 25,000 startups, 52 unicorns (startups with a valuation of $1 billion or more), and 47 unicorns.

India ranks third behind the United States and Germany in the penetration of artificial intelligence skills, and AI plays a major role in engineering and research and development (ER&D).

“We will ensure the best-trained talent is supplied from Karnataka. We are talking to several partners including services companies, and GCCs (global capability centers) in the industry. We are ready to train them,” says Priyank.

Infosys co-founder Senapathy Gopalakrishnan says, “An academic institution that wants to create an ecosystem of innovation must have space to co-locate the industry’s R&D. Explaining what can be achieved through this. You can now bring two entities together, industry and academia, and they can walk to their lab. Students can walk in, apprenticeships are possible, and internships are possible. So, we need to engineer these things.”