After tour of the United States, Large and Medium Industries Minister M.B. Patil and Electronics & IT/BT Minister Priyank Kharge on Thursday said that several American companies have expressed interest to invest around ₹25,000 crore in Karnataka.
Both Ministers held a joint press conference on the outcome of the business promotion delegation headed by them to the U.S. and said some of the companies are already in the process of investing around $1 billion in the State. “Our discussions primarily focused on semiconductors, aerospace and defence, electric vehicles, space, and precision manufacturing,“ Mr. Patil said.
Mr. Kharge also stated that the government would organise a global start-up summit in Bengaluru next year. Mr. Patil said that the Karnataka government would organise the next global investors meet (GIM) at the end of 2024 or in early 2025.
The delegation shared ideas with leading companies such as Applied Materials, AMD, Juniper, Global Foundries, LAM Research, Boeing, Krypton, Dell, MKS Instruments, GE Healthcare, Intelsat, RTX, Teradyne, Texas Instruments, Apple, and Waters Corp among others. It also met with a few startups like Leolabs, Fictiv and T-Second, the Ministers said.
“The purpose of the visit to the U.S. was to highlight Karnataka as a promising destination for investment. This visit to the U.S. was necessary and important considering the fast-changing geo-political dynamics as a large number of global companies are looking at India, especially Karnataka, as an attractive, safe destination for new investment or expanding their existing presence,” Mr. Patil remarked.
Further, Mr. Kharge said that the purpose of the visit was to attract investment at a time when not only China but other States within the country are competing with each other to attract investors. The State government is tying up with AMD to train engineers based on the syllabus provided by the company to meet their requirements for human resources. AMD will be hiring 800 engineers in India, he said.
Stating that Karnataka stands in 18th position in the innovation index, Mr. Kharge said that the State was taking many new initiatives to improve the ranking and the aim is to be among the top 10.
Published - October 12, 2023 08:25 pm IST
