Karnataka Home To Almost 30 Per Cent Of Country’s Startups; Will Play Huge Role In Five Trillion Dollar Economy Target: CM Bommai

As the country marked January 16 as National Startup Day, Karnataka announced a host of measures to support its start-up industry, having bagged the highest National Startup awards among all states.

Of the total 2,177 applications received by the Centre from across the country, 459 were from Karnataka of which a total of 14 won the national awards. On this occasion, Chief minister Basavaraj Bommai said the government looked forward to replicating the success of Bengaluru in other districts.

Crediting Prime Minister Narendra Modi with the success of the sector, Bommai said it was due to his efforts to launch Startup India that the country which had only 500 startups in 2016, today had over 54,000. And one third of these are in Karnataka, as the ‘state is the most preferred destination for the startups as it provides opportunities for the new ventures to grow and flourish’.

"Karnataka is the hub of IT-BT based startups in the country,” added Bommai, elaborating about various measures like the Startup Cell in the state and programmes like Elevate-100, Elevate-Unnati, Elevate-75 and Elevate-25 which are ‘aimed at giving fillip to the new ventures’.

Minsiter for IT/BT Dr C N Ashwath Narayan said the state will provide seed funding of up to Rs 50 lakh for 200 startups in the state to promote technological innovation.

“This being the 75th year of Independence the seed funding will be facilitated to additional 75 Startups to achieve the tally to 200 Startups in the year,” said Narayan.

“In view of maintaining the leading position of the state in the sector the stress on digital education and skill development will be focussed through effective implementation of NEP", he added.

Karnataka, as pointed out by Narayan, has so far Rs 1.60 lakh crore of foreign direct investment which is more than 50 per cent of the investment made in the entire country.

“Prime Minister Narendra Modi has said, that the role of startups will be crucial in India becoming ‘vishwaguru’ and ‘super power’. Going forward along the lines of the Prime Minister’s thought, the growth of hardware will also be facilitated together with software in the state. ART part (Artificial Intelligence & Robotics Translational Park) set up at IISc stands as a testimony to the commitment towards the growth of emerging industries,” said Narayan.

“Under ESDM policy, Rs 5,000 crores will be given as subsidy, and out of this Rs 2,000 crores has already been given in the first year,” he added.

Naffa innovations Pvt.Ltd, Umbo Idtech Pvt. Ltd (Fintech), Thinkerbell Labs (Edutech), Simplotel Technologies (Travel & Hospitality), Blinkin Technologies (Augmented Reality), Tagbox Solutions (IOT- healthcare), Shapos Services Pvt. Ltd, Athreya Global Solutions, Zentron Labs Pvt Ltd (Agritech post-harvest), Marketxpander Services (Customer Relationship Management), Leucine Rich Bio Pvt. Ltd (Life Sciences), Stellapps Technologies (Animal Husbandry), 1 Bridge (Freight & Logistics), and Steradian Semiconductors(Traffic Management) are the 14 startup’s from Karnataka that received the national awards.