Karnataka SEZs | IT/BT | Industries Projects Thread

[naveen_blr]

Thanks so much KK even i tried to google and did not find much info = These should be developed outside bangalore for sure.

[Krishnamoorthy K]

The link here provides full NMIZ policy of Government of India (GoI).

Originally Posted by Krishnamoorthy K

DIPP

Similarly GoI has PCPIR policy.

http://chemicals.nic.in/PCPIRPolicy.pdf
http://www.indiachem.in/pdf/PCPIR.pdf

I could not locate ITIR polciy or scheme of GoI.

http://deity.gov.in/content/electronics-it-industry

But, here are some links summarizing ITIR policy.

http://pib.nic.in/newsite/erelease.aspx?relid=37077
http://www.igovernment.in/site/ccea-...tment-regions/
http://www.exclventures.com/News-abo...ions-India.asp

Also GoI has policies/schemes for SEZs including Free Trade and Warehousing Zones (FTWZs), Export Processing Zones (EPZs), etc.

http://www.sezindia.nic.in/goi-policies.asp

A list of Karnataka's policies & acts are here

http://www.kumbangalore.com/Sections...=18&ParentId=3
http://www.kumbangalore.com/incentiv...=25&ParentId=5
http://www.kumbangalore.com/ <--- Draft Aerospace Policy
http://www.advantagekarnataka.com/gl.../downloads.php <--- Acts & Policies
http://www.advantagekarnataka.com/im...tors_Guide.pdf
http://karnatakaindustry.gov.in/

And Karnataka's ITIR Act is here

http://dpal.kar.nic.in/pdf_files/.%5C37of2010%20(E).pdf
http://www.bangaloreitbt.in/itir.html

Karnataka is also planning for Special Investment Regions (SIR) like Gujarat but, it does not have SIR policy. The central government also does not have any policy for SIR. Only Gujarat has SIR policy.

http://www.gidb.org/cms.aspx?content_id=95
http://www.gidb.org/downloads/presentation.pdf
http://www.gidc.gov.in/pdf/SIR-Brochure.pdf

SIRs proposed in Karnataka are

Mangalore region
North Karnataka (Exact location is not specified.)
Bangalore region

http://www.advantagekarnataka.com/in...astructure.php

In general NMIZ, PCPIR, ITIR are specialized versions of SIR. And GoK needs to come up with a scheme/policy for SIR soon. It may not be a big task to copy and modify Gujarat SIR Act to suit Karnataka's requirements.

http://www.advantagekarnataka.com/im...IMZ-Report.pdf

I think GoK is also planning for a NMIZ in Dharawada. (Advantage Karnataka is not clear whether it is NMIZ or SIR in Dharawada.) As Ballari (VADA) and Tumakuru were older proposals I think GoI might have approved them now. (read BL) One more good thing about NMIZ is lot of green concepts are encouraged in the policy.

http://www.advantagekarnataka.com/im...ion-Report.pdf
http://www.advantagekarnataka.com/im...f-Interest.pdf

Karnataka is expecting an investment of around Rs. 30,000 crores in each SIR and each NMIZ.

I think Hasana should also be identified as a multiproduct SIR with Food Processing SEZ, Textile SEZ, Pharmaceutical SEZ, proposed 'Model Industrial Area' and proposed 'Chemical and Petrochemicals Park'. In case Chennai-Bengaluru Industrial Corridor is extended to Mangaluru (as demanded by businessmen - Chennai-Bangalore corridor: Officials propose new routes‎) then Hasana can become a major Industrial Zone for export. As such now itself most of existing export processing units of Karnataka are located along Benagluru-Hasana-Mangaluru. (read page 6 of Industrial Infrastructure PDF file in Advantage Karnataka) Tumakuru & Mandya could also be a part of Chennai-Bengaluru-Mangaluru Industrial Corridor along with Bengaluru districts, Kolar, Chikkaballapura, etc.

Generally SIR will be a cluster of industries fed by a mother industry like a oil refinery (PCPIR) or a steel plant. What I think is SIR in Dharwara may be for steel based units fed by proposed steel plants in Gadag or Haveri. (though POSCO steel plant plan is dropped, Tata steel plant plan is still on.) If is for downstream steel manufacturing units then it could be NMIZ if the central government approves the proposal.

Tumkur is also a iron ore rich district with a few steel plants already proposed in the district is suitable for steel based manufacturing units. So, my expectation is that both Ballari and Tumakuru will be basically steel based NMIZ.

On Industrial Cooridors front, there are proposals of PRIDe Corrdior (or Chennai-Bengaluru-Mubai Corridor) and Suvarna Karnataka Corridors. The corridors will have eight-lane roads and 25 km stretch on both sides of roads will be developed with industrial clusters & zones and townships. The state policy does not talk about developing railways and airports along these corridors like DMIC although there are plans to develop more airports and seaports. Ideally a industrial corridor can have dedicated frieght corridors (road or rail), HSRL (as more population will be concentrated along industrial corridors), gas pipeline, etc.

http://www.advantagekarnataka.com/in...e-corridor.php
http://www.advantagekarnataka.com/in...d-corridor.php
http://www.karnatakaindustry.gov.in/...%20English.pdf
http://dipp.gov.in/English/Policies/Policy.aspx

I would like to identify more SIRs along PRIDe corridor also.

Read also
http://www.allianceindia.co.in/newsi...papers/SEZ.pdf

[mangalore mania]

Thanks for the information KK..

[suraj89]

Shimoga to get India's Largest Space Park.
[IMG]http://i46.************/34xm2i8.png[/IMG]
[IMG]http://i45.************/8y6oac.png[/IMG]
Source: ShimogaTimeshttp://shimogatimes.blogspot.in/ http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-GR5Hz4XVkU...0/1%2Bcopy.jpg

[Krishnamoorthy K]

x-post from Railway Development thread

Originally Posted by RRaju

It would be better

Mangalore-Madgaon-Hubli-bellary-guntakal-nandyal - Guntur - to some Port in Coastal Andhra.

Mangalore-arsikere-chikkjajur-Rayadurga-Bellary-Kadpa-Obulavaripalle-Krishnapatanam port in Nellore distict.

These would have provided the required East-West Coast Connectivity for both Logistics and Passenger Traffic view point. Future Economically Growth Corridors which will enhance the GDP of respective states and Country as such.

Originally Posted by Krishnamoorthy K

I think you are talking about developing industrial corridors all along these railway routes. As Ankola-Hubballi-Ballari route is already planned along with VADA project to connect to Tadadi port we can think of extending it further from Ballari to Andhra ports on eastern side. Anyway Goa will have double track connectivity with Hubballi. And Mangaluru is connected through Konkan Railway to Ankola-Hubballi-Ballari route. As an alternative Mangaluru-Arasikere-Chikkajajuru-Rayadurga-Ballari is also fine for Mangaluru connectivity to Ballari. But, we need to double Mangaluru-Hasana route at the earliest to cater to increased goods traffic from Bengaluru-Mysuru region. I think they may start thinking of doubling of Konkan railway soon as Kochi-Mangaluru double line is alomost ready. Essentially we require enough feeder lines from Konkan route to Bengaluru-Pune-Mumbai corridor. AP can also think of improving feeder network to this corridor.

I am not sure whether AP is interested in Hyderabad-Pune-Mumbai corridor. We can also think of connecting to Vishakapatnam-Kakinada PCPIR corridor may be through Vijayawada and have a grand corridor Vishakapatnam-Kakinada-Vijayawada-Hyderabad-Pune-Mumbai. This corridor will help cities like Bidar, Gulbarga, Bijapura in Karnataka.

I don't think Nellore and Chitradurga although proposed by center will be part of Chennai-Bengaluru corridor due to realignment requests.

Ideally main corridors passing through Karnataka could be

• Chennai-Bengaluru-Hubballi-Pune-Mumbai (Mysuru, Mandya, Kolara, Bengaluru, Tumakuru, Chitradurga, Davanagere, Hubballi, Belgaum in Karnataka will be benefited. Mysuru is added.)
• Vishakapatnam-Kakinada-Hyderabad-Pune-Mumbai (Bidar, Gulbarga, Bijapura in Karnataka will be benefited)
• Trivandrum-Mangaluru-Goa-Mumbai (Mangaluru, Udupi, Karawara in Karnataka will be benefited)

The first corrdior here is PRIDe corridor mentioned in Advantage Karnataka website. Click.

There could be other small corridors in Karnataka like

• Chitradurga-Ballari-Rayachuru-Yadagiri-Gulbarga-Bidar
• Belgaum-Bijapura-Gulbarga
• Chitradurga-Koppala-Bijapura
• Chitradurga-Shivamogga-Udupi-Mangaluru (as a part of Mangaluru-Udupi-Shivamogga-Chikkajajuru-Rayadurga-Ballari)
• Tumakuru-Shivamogga-Honnavara

These corridors are Suvaran Karnataka corridors mentioned in Advantage Karnataka website. Click.

We also need two more corridors

• Mangaluru-Hasana-Bengaluru (for Bengaluru & Mangaluru connectivity)
• Ankola-Hubballi-Ballari (for VADA connectivity with Tadadi)

Then all remaining industrial regions (SEZ, SIR, Industrial Park, etc) connected to these corridors through feeder networks.

A few of infrastructure either already planned or to be developed along these corridors are frieght corridors (rail & road), passanger (normal trains, HSRL), gas pipelines, industrial infrastructure (SEZ, SIR, industrial park, industrial township), urban infrastructure (township), etc. And also seaports (Mangaluru, Padubidre, Haladipura, Tadadi) and airports.



Mysuru connection to Coimbatore-Kochin corridor is not shown.

[Krishnamoorthy K]

GAIL pipeline


Infraline


Infraline

Other piplelines existing and proposed in India


pptfree.com

Looks like more Gas pipelines will pass through Dharawada region. Even a pipeline is planned through Gulbarga, Bijapura region.

[sunil.kulkarni]

If all goes well and if the plan is implemented in letter and spirit in the right earnest, Gulbarga will become a National Centre of Information and Communication Technology by the year 2020.The State government has an ambitious plan of developing five cities across the State as National Centres of ICT and included among them is Gulbarga.
The task of developing Gulbarga into a National ICT centre has been entrusted to the newly constituted Karnataka ICT Group 2020 headed by T V Mohandas Pai, Chairman of Manipal Global Education Services. Apart from Gulbarga, the cities that have been planned to be developed as national ICT Centres are Hubli-Dharwad, Belgaum,Mangaloreand Mysore. The intention of the government is to develop the major cities of the State into ICT centres of national consequence covering all parts of the State. While the three districts come in North Karnataka, one each in Old Mysore region and coastal Karnataka.
Gulbarga, which is on the path of modern development is all set to have its airport in the PPP model which will be operational at any time from now.
The city is also poised to host Apparel Park and Information Technology Park the work on which has already begun. There is also a proposal to set up a Tur Industry Cluster and Indian Institute of Information Technology (IIIT) in the historic city. The city is already hosting a Central University. The proposed National ICT Centre will make Gulbarga a city of consequence of modern technology creating a lot of employment and economic opportunities by the year 2020.
The State government has constituted an eight member KICT Group under the chairmanship of Mohandas Pai and consisting of Sagitaur Ventures India Chairman and CEO B V Naidu as the Vice-Chairman, and IIIT Bangalore Directors Sadagopan and Sudip Banerjee; Tejas Networks CEO and MD Sanjay Nayak, Director of Nasscom Bangalore, India Semiconductor Association Chairman, and TiE Bangalore President as members. The group has been constituted with the vision and mission of maintaining the growth of ICT in Karnataka.
There is said to be tremendous scope for development and expansion of ICT in the State which is evident from the State generating ICT revenue to the tune of Rs1.35 lakh crore at present.
The target is to increase it to Rs 4 lakh crore by 2020; increase the employment in ICT from 8 lakh to 20 lakh; Create/ help incubate 1,000 startups/ entrepreneur driven companies.
Apart from setting up national ICT centres in the Tier- II cities strategies before the KICT Group include making Bangalore the global city of choice in ICT; set up incubation facilities in the national centres; Set up partnership with Singapore, Japan, Australia, France, Taiwan and Germany to accelerate business cooperation and entrepreneurship.
In order to remain in the race of global competition and to exploit the opportunities to the fullest possible the government has decided to go for the measures to reap maximum dividends by 2020 in the ICT sector. This has also become imperative with the industry experts predicting 15 per cent annual growth in ICT industry and also to increase the State’s share in the global ICT market.


http://nammagulbarga.com/gulbarga-ne...nal-ict-centre

[Krishnamoorthy K]

Srikanth Kallammanavar Madikeri: Sept 9 , 2012 DH News Service

Building work has remained incomplete for last four years

The work on the building to house electronic equipment assembling centre, at Industrial layout in Madikeri has remained incomplete for the last three to four years.

As heavy industries can not be set up in Kodagu district owing to its unique geography, the authorities had decided to promote small industries catering to the needs of electronics sector. Hence, Karnataka State Small Industries Development Corporation took up the work on the building three to four years ago.

With Madikeri receiving heavy rains for six months in a year, no major industries can be developed. Hence, to provide employment to the locals, the KSSIDC former president T P Ramesh had decided to set up electronic equipment assembling centre way back in 1997-99.

As per the decision of T P Ramesh, the work on the building commenced after several years. The work on three- floor building has remained incomplete even after three to four years. The contractor has stopped the work demanding additional funds with the steep increase in the price of construction materials, says the officials.

The official in the Corporation is least bothered to complete the work on the building. The building structure which was developed spending lakhs have remained incomplete and have become shelter for stray dogs and nomadic tribes.

DHNS

[engineer.akash]

Top-notch talent pool lures IT, BPO firms to Karnataka

The trend points to manpower availability for skills that are more than plain vanilla outsourcing work that companies indulged in earlier.

BANGALORE, SEPT. 5:
Despite a slowdown, Karnataka continues to draw IT and BPO companies due to the large talent pool and specialised skill sets.

In the last two months, four IT and BPO companies have opened development centres in Karnataka.

Nasdaq-listed Pegasystems opened a new development centre totalling 55,000 square feet in workspace. The Bangalore centre will support its global operations and will deliver R&D, engineering services, industry solutions framework and customer support to its global Fortune 500 clients, similar to other software majors.

In July, Xchanging, a London Stock Exchange (LSE)-listed IT and BPO company opened a new centre in Shimoga Special Economic Zone and aims to hire 3,000 people by 2013.

Similarly, Serco, a BPO company this week opened a new facility at Shimoga and plans to have a total headcount of 450 people by November. The facility will offer BPO services to a leading privately held telecom company.

‘ATTRACTIVE PROPOSITION’

According to analysts, despite higher costs due to inflation, availability of talent still makes it an attractive proposition.

“We did not open operations only due to cost but to help us drive the next wave of growth based on our value proposition,” said Alan Trefler, founder and CEO, Pegasystems.

“No other location in the world offers the large pool of quality talent found in cities such as Bangalore. They offer a bundle of distinct and mutually reinforcing benefits which companies can leverage for competitive advantage,” said Peter Schumacher, CEO, Value Leadership Group.

A further proof of this can be seen from the fact that this month, Ellucian, a company that provides technology for higher education opened a new development centre in the heart of Bangalore.

All this points to manpower availability for skills that are more than plain vanilla outsourcing work that companies indulged in earlier.

“Companies are focussing on areas such as predictive analytics for the US financial sector, regulatory compliance related work etc. as compared to call centre kind of jobs,” said Sanjoy Sen, senior director, Deloitte.

PREMIUM ON TALENT

Sidhant Rastogi, director, Zinnov, said: “In most cases, companies setting up their centres were unable to find the right talent in the right number in their native geography, or could not source talent locally in the near future.”

A recent study by Zinnov found that India will produce 250,000 engineers from only tier 1 engineering colleges over the next five years.

The Hindu

[Krishnamoorthy K]

Proposal to set up 'Taiwanese City? in Bangalore for hardware manufacturing, on track
Bibhu Ranjan Mishra / Bangalore Sep 25, 2012, 16:20 IST

If Taiwan is the hub for electronic hardware manufacturing, India is also setting an eye to create electronic manufacturing hub within the country, with the help of Taiwanese companies.

The Taiwanese government has approached Karnataka to set up 'Taiwanese City’, an integrated township which will be used both for residential as well as for housing hardware manufacturing industries.

According to official sources, Karnataka government has given them the options of two sites for the 'Taiwanese City’. These include 1,400 acres of land in Narsapur in Kolar district of Karnataka and 700 acres of land near the international airport in Devanahalli. As per the proposal, 30 per cent of the township will be reserved for electronic industries and the balance will be used for residential purposes.

A Taiwanese delegation including representatives from the industry is expected to visit the state to finalise between the two places, sources in the government said. However, he said that one of the pre-conditions that Taiwan has set for the project is that only Taiwanese companies will be allowed to set up shops in the “Taiwanese City’.

“While we are keen to acquire expertise in electronic hardware manufacturing, they want only the Taiwanese companies to come and set up operations in the proposed city. This makes us to think twice since we want to open this for hardware industries from all parts of the world,” the official added.

He said the government will take a final decision on the project once the Taiwanese delegation take a call on the location where they want to set up the city.

The government of India has laid an ambitious policy to promote the electronic hardware manufacturing sector in the country. As the first step in this direction, the government renamed the Department of Information Technology (DIT) as the Department of Electronics and IT (DEITY), earlier this year.

With the renewed focus on electronics, the government expects to narrow the gap in domestic production and mammoth imports of electronics which is expected to touch $300 billion by 2020.

BS

Karnataka govt to open integrated Taiwan township

[Krishnamoorthy K]

Bangalore, September 27, 2012, DHNS:

Karnataka government has reiterated its aim to take the contribution of the manufacturing sector to its GDP from the current 17 per cent to 20 per cent as it realised the need for an impetus in the neglected sector.

“For 220 million jobs to be created by 2025, the manufacturing sector is of utmost importance as it also creates a lot of other subsidiary employments,” Karnataka Industries Minister Murugesh Nirani said, addressing the joint inauguration of EMMA Expo and Indian Manufacturing Show here.

This year, the expo will showcase Taiwan’s electronic and ICT products, machinery, auto-parts, food processing and green technology to the Indian market.

At the expo, Mahindra & Mahindra Chairman Anand Mahindra echoed similar views and said that the country has for the past few decades been believing that India’s IT sector would leap ahead of China’s manufacturing sector and compensated for India’s growth in manufacturing.

DHNS

For export currently, IT number 1, Gems & Jewellery number 2, Petroleum products number 3.

[engineer.akash]

KEONICS SHIMOGA IT PARK





Copyright lemonstree

[engineer.akash]

SHIMOGA

Xchanging BPO





Copyright lemonstree

[engineer.akash]

Aissel product development centre opened in Hubli

HUBLI, OCT. 2:
Aissel Solutions, an analytics and CRM solutions provider which has presence in US and India, has opened its product development centre at Hubli.

The company’s centre is located at Hubli’s IT Park. “This will be the key development centre of Aissel and has over 3,500 square feet of space with high-bandwidth connectivity,” Prasad Patil, CEO Aissel told Business Line.

So far Aissel has been able to deliver solutions to its clients in the US and has created product for medical thought leader management and is competing with few Silicon Valley based pharma CRM providers.

Early this year, the company has signed up with three global pharmaceutical / medical devices companies to implement business intelligence (BI) software and analytics solutions.

Prasad said “We are currently working with a Minnesota based company supporting their dental division in finding out the right dental experts in the US, who they can partner with to grow the products sales.”

The new facility was opened by Vijay Sankeshwar, Chairman and Managing Director, VRL Logistics. The first two employees of the company, Amit Vikram and Nityanand Channur were also honoured.

The company currently has 30 people in Hubli centre and has plans to double the head count by end of this year.

“There were a lot of apprehensions when we started off about a year and a half back in Hubli. Getting experienced people in Hubli was difficult especially in a challenging product development environment,” Patil said.

“Now the team determines the success and there is tremendous availability of talented people in the region and the KOL Management product was released to the global market in less than a year’s time,” he added.

http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/...ue&ref=wl_home

[engineer.akash]

Hubli Joins The Circuit

Karnataka's Hubli is home to growing bunch of tech start-ups

Karnataka's Hubli is home to growing bunch of tech start-ups


Vivek Pawar of Sankalp Semiconductors. PHOTOS: Deepak G Pawar

An innocuous sentence in a presentation that Sasisekar Krish was making to a friend changed his company in ways he could never have imagined. He said: "We also sort nuts."

Krish's start-up, Nanopix, was selling image processing services to automotive companies around Chennai in 2009. Their factories needed cameras to inspect the dimensions of components such as nuts and bolts. But Ankesh Jain, a castor oil supplier with contacts in the automobile industry of Hubli, a city in northern Karnataka, thought "nuts" meant cashews, and phoned a local exporter.

Krish was aware of the confusion, but was loath to give up. Sitting in a Cafe Coffee Day in the city's Travellers Bungalow Road, the IIT Madras graduate who worked for seven years with Wipro in Bangalore, downloaded pictures of cashews and wrote a program that could distinguish the colour and size of the nuts.

"It works," he told the exporter, who stared at him in disbelief. Cashew nuts need inspection, too. Sorting them is labour-intensive and expensive, so why not automate?


The exporter agreed, but gave him no business. Undeterred, Krish decided to build a machine anyway. The first one was ready by October 2010. Using imageprocessing algorithms, the machine can capture, process and analyse 18 cashew nuts a second, sorting them into 12 varieties based on size, colour, surface finish and shape. He has sold three machines to date, for Rs 25 lakh each.

Nanopix started in Bangalore, but moved to Hubli where it got incubation space, mentorship and funding from the Deshpande Foundation, set up by Indian-American entrepreneur and venture capitalist Gururaj Deshpande. The foundation works to develop social entrepreneurship.

Krish, now 35, is hardly alone. A bunch of IT services companies, including many software start-ups, have popped up in Hubli in recent years. "Five years back, there were only three IT companies in the city," says Vivek Pawar, CEO of chip design company Sankalp Semiconductors. "On average, they employed around 10 people. Now, we have more than 20 companies with an average of 20-25 people." Sankalp is based in Hubli.


Remarkably, the city never figured on India's tech map and not even in the Karnataka government's scheme of things. A presentation by the state government for its much publicised Global Investors' Meet in June this year showcased the IT parks of Karnataka's Tier 2 cities - Gulbarga, Mangalore, Mysore, and Shimoga. Hubli, which has two IT parks, was given a miss.

Hubli is a sleepy city of around 200 square kilometres. It missed the bus in the mid-1990s, when large IT services companies such as Infosys first thought of Tier 2 locations such as Mangalore and Mysore. Hubli had neither an airport nor the kind of history that benefited many locations. For example, the proliferation of defence and electronics public sector units in Bangalore and Mysore led to the clustering of engineering colleges in the region, offering a perfect setting when software services took root. Pune, too, has seen the growth of outsourced R&D companies because its automotive and mechanical engineering heritage dates back to the 1940s.


'We are thinking how the college can directly impact the regional economy,' says Ashok Shettar, Principal, BVB College

Hubli, by contrast, was a centre for trade in cotton and iron during the Vijayanagar empire. Then came handloom textile units and cotton processing mills, and much later, the manufacture of products such as industrial valves. An auto cluster is on the rise now, but technology was always an alien. All this is set to change as a bunch of young entrepreneurs fight to establish the city's identity in the Bangaloredominated world of IT. Operating expenses in Hubli are much lower than in Bangalore. The starting salary for a BPO employee is Rs 6000 to Rs 7,000, as opposed to at least Rs 10,000 to Rs 12,000 in Bangalore.

An ecosystem is also brewing. Besides the 20-odd tech entrepreneurs, Hubli has academia, global mentors, The Indus Entrepreneurs (TiE, a group formed in Silicon Valley in the US, to encourage entrepreneurship), incubation facilities, fastgrowing infrastructure, and now, Jagadish Shettar, Chief Minister of Karnataka. Shettar grew up, practiced law in, and got elected to the Assembly from Hubli, some 400 km northwest of Bangalore.


"We have sufficient land in Hubli-Dharwad for IT companies," he says. "Whatever incentives we provided to IT investors in Bangalore in the beginning, the same kind of support will be available to investors in Hubli, too."

Many entrepreneurs in Hubli count him among their friends. Shettar, as Karnataka's revenue minister in 2009, played a crucial role in getting 48 acres sanctioned for the Aryabhata Tech Park, which allowed 10 companies access to cheap land. Another 500 acres or so has been identified between Hubli and its twin city, Dharwad. The buzz is that two large Indian IT services companies with hubs in Bangalore may soon make Hubli a spoke in their business model.


Hubli's start-ups, meanwhile, are scaling up fast and increasingly doing complex work for global customers. Able Design Engineering Services, which does product design, is also a leading bus design company, with customers such as Tata Marcopolo and UK coach maker Alexander Dennis. NS Infotech has hired a team of MTechs to redesign components for GE's steam turbine systems. Nextgen Digital Imaging Services has developed software to turn photos into designer e-albums.

Sankalp Semiconductors, the biggest of the lot with 450 employees and $10 million in revenues, designs analog chips for devices such as mobile phones, TV, and modems. Its customers include the world's largest chipmakers. It is working on a 20-nanometer project, the latest manufacturing process node in semiconductors. In layman's terms, it is designing chip components that are 0.02 microns thick (a strand of human hair is 50 to 100 microns). With each new node, the chips get smaller, consume less power and improve in performance.


Sankalp's CEO Vivek Pawar is a slim, bearded and voluble man. He talks so fast that his words get jumbled at times. A cancer survivor, Pawar dreamt of starting a company while meditating on a mountain near Salt Lake City in the US in 2003. He wanted to be in Hubli for reasons beyond cost. Retaining talent was easier, and there was that ulterior motive - he wanted to do " something for India".

"If Sankalp could become successful in a Tier 2 city, so could any other company," he says during a conversation frequently interrupted by phone calls and colleagues. He recalls the trend set by chipmaker Texas Instruments, which came to Bangalore in 1985. "Every other company from the US followed. Bangalore grew this way."


'If our company could become successful in a Tier 2 city, so could any other company,' says Vivek Pawar, Sankalp Semiconductors.

He says the mentorship of Gururaj Deshpande, also called Desh, is changing how local entrepreneurs think and function. Desh prodded Pawar to expand sales in the US during the 2009 recession. Sankalp benefited as US chipmakers ramped up projects as soon as the economy started to pick up. Desh also advised Sankalp to buy the semiconductor hardware solutions business of mid-tier player KPIT Cummins. Pawar parted with a 15 per cent stake in his company to acquire the arm in July 2012.

Desh, who left India in 1973, has founded and invested in about 10 companies, including Sycamore Networks, Cascade Communications and Coral Network Corporation. His biggest investment in India is Bangalore optical networking technology company Tejas Networks. But in Hubli, he wants to help small companies grow. He was instrumental in bringing TiE to Hubli, where its energetic head, Naveen Jha, now advises many start-ups.


Santosh Huralikoppi's NS Infotech designs for GE

"There's Nanopix," says Desh, who is visiting Hubli, and speaking with Business Today while sitting barefoot in the Deshpande Foundation office on the campus of the B.V. Bhoomaraddi (BVB) College of Engineering & Technology. "We also funded AquaSafi, which has found a way to purify water. These are all smaller ideas. We'd love to see 100 companies have 100 people each and create 10,000 jobs, as opposed to one large company that employs 10,000."

BVB College, founded in 1947, is a hub of start-up action in the city. Principal Ashok Shettar is seemingly impressed by a 2009 Kauffman Foundation report, which says that if companies founded by graduates of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology were a country, it would be the world's 17th largest economy with revenues of $2 trillion.

"We have reached a stage where we produce very good graduates," says principal Shettar. "We added value to North Karnataka. Then we started thinking if the college can directly impact the regional economy. Can it go beyond human resources development and research?"


Californian Anurag Sridharan is CEO, NextDrop

The college has incubated seven companies on its campus, giving them free space, Internet connections and office furniture. The list includes companies started by alumni. Biosyl Technologies, which designs research equipment, was formed in June 2012 by BVB biotechnology graduates, Sarah D'Souza and Amit Vernekar.

Shashank Revankar, an electronic engineering graduate of the college, started Kooki, an embedded electronics product company, also in June. Kooki is designing a prototype for its first product, a home security system that can be operated through a smartphone. "We have a team of five, all studying at BVB College," says Revankar. "They will join full-time once they graduate next year. I will top whatever salary they are offered by any company."

Hubli's entrepreneurs have a challenge, though. Retaining talent is easier than in, say, Bangalore, but getting mid- to senior-level people to move to a Tier 2 location is tough. Pawar's Sankalp had to award senior executives significant equity.

On the brighter side, executives from outside the country are willing to relocate to Hubli to jump-start a venture. Born and raised in California, Anurag Sridharan, 25, is CEO of NextDrop, a service that alerts subscribers via SMS about when the civic authorities will turn the water on (Hubli's taps have water only once in every two to five days). "I am loving it," she says. "I wanted to run a business and that is what I am doing."

Business Today


Hubli is developing faster than Mysore and Mangalore I have always stood by that argument.Hubli has a huge talent pool and will forge ahead.
Hubli will beat Mysore in few years down the line.

[pavan9741650414]

[pavan9741650414]

Hubli to get IT-SEZ soon, Commerce Min may give nod to KIADB

The Union Ministry of Commerce is mulling over issuing a final notification on the approval of a proposal by the Karnataka Industrial Area Development Board (KIADB) to set up an IT-SEZ in Hubli.

Once the project is completed it could provide a fillip to the state government's initiative to develop Hubli-Dharwad into a prominent IT hub in the Northern Karnataka region, according to industry insiders. KIADB had proposed to develop the SEZ on around 30 acres at Gamanagatti area in Hubli-Dharwad.

After this three-year-old project gets a final nod from the Centre it will be up to the state to take it further. Till now the state government has agreed tohelp KIADB for installing industrial infrastructure.

M Manjunath Gowda, resident director, Karnataka Udyog Mitra, who pursues state projects, said "The SEZ proposal was cleared by the Board of Approval (BoA) of the Union Commerce Ministry last May and final notification in this regard is pending. The notification was expected in the last month but it got delayed due to some administrative reasons. I will meet the concerned officials to expedite the process."

The final notification is getting delayed as it awaits no objection certificates (NOC) from various government agencies. In this regard, Member of Parliament from Dharwad, Prahlad Joshi met with Union Commerce Minister Anand Sharma and other top ministry officials to push the project further.

Promoters:Karnataka Industrial Area Development Board
Cost:N.A.
Industry:SEZ
Stage:Planning
Project Type:New
Completion Date:N.A.
Districtharwad (Karnataka)

The project involves implementation of IT SEZ in Hubli, Dharwad District of Karnataka.

[mangalore mania]

IT SEZ in tier II cities has to be invested by companies itself like the Infosys in Mangalore, Mysore..
Or else it fates will be like Aryabhatta IT Park of Hubli and the new one in Shimoga..

I dont think other cities in Karnataka are still ready accept IT in large scale. Other than Mangalore and Mysore.

Almost all Engineering colleges in Mangalore get campus placements in large number. This is what I heard from my juniors

[mangalore mania]

Unfortunately there is no progress in IT park for Mangalore, proposed by KEONICS along with other in state. Shimoga got shaped up, Hubli is in planning.

Dont forget the IT SEZ notified in Mangalore at Konaje was fully occupied by Infosys and there is EPIP proposed too and land has been marked with roads, But govt is not providing enough support and infrastructure there

[mangalore mania]

City based IT firm bags ‘Business and Service Excellence Award 2012’

Mangalore, October 16: City based IT firm InfosoftX, has bagged the prestigious ‘Business and Service Excellence Award 2012’.

The Award function was held in Bangalore by Big Research India and its media partner NDTV Profit. The Award was honored by chief guest Krishnamachari Srikanth, Chairman Selection Committee, National Cricket Team of India.

Jeena Jenet Furtado, Corporate Relation Officer of InfosoftX, Mangalore, received the award.

InfosoftX was Initiated in the year of 2011 by M A Majeed. With its registered office in Mangalore, InfosoftX is one of the upcoming IT firm, primarily focusing on IT services - web, windows and mobile based application development and

maintenance expertise.