Bangalore: The State Government plans to hold an IT investors' meet in Belgaum in the end of November or early December to attract companies to the tier-II city, M.N. Vidyashankar, Secretary, IT and BT, said here on Tuesday.

"Large chunks of developed land is available in Belgaum with IT-friendly infrastructure, connectivity and talent," Mr. Vidyashankar told reporters.

Meanwhile, the Software Technology Parks of India (STPI) has appointed Ernst & Young to undertake a study on the performance of Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) operating in the IT and ITES sectors in Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh.

"SMEs are not performing up to the expectations. We have asked E&Y to do a study on their performance to find out which are the areas where they are finding it difficult to operate when compared with their larger counterparts. The study will be released in four to five weeks," said B.V. Naidu, Director, STPI, Bangalore and Hyderabad.

Mr. Naidu said that the content of the overall events at the Bangalore IT.in 2006 was "substantially good." The success of this year's annual mega IT event has been attributed to the number of companies that participated, the number of delegates and visitors, the contents of the conferences and the interest generated. "There may be a drop in numbers. But, overall, we are quite satisfied," Mr Naidu said adding that STPI propose to start projects jointly with the Information, Communication and Technology Authority of Sri Lanka in that country.

Bangalore IT.in 2006 attracted over 250 companies including 160 international firms such as Texas Instruments, Xerox, WEP, Infosys, Cognizant, Reliance and Wipro. Trade delegations from Britain, Australia, Barcelona, New Zealand, Bavaria, China, Baltic, Taiwan and Germany participated in the exposition.

About 14 State Governments also participated in the ninth edition of the annual event. Over 350 Indian and foreign delegates attended the conferences and trade seminars held as part of the four-day event while about 70,000 people visited the exposition.

IP zone

Buoyed by the success of the "IP Zone" that attracted a lot of visitors, a group of companies in the semiconductor space has decided to launch an "innovation India forum." "Over the next few weeks, we will form a committee that will have members from Government bodies, MNCs and local Indian companies," said Rajeev Mehtani, Vice President and Site Innovation Manager, NXP Semiconductors.

Industry leaders felt that the creation of the IP Zone at the event was the first step towards positioning India as a destination of choice for IP and development of global product companies from India. .

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