Gulbarga 2020, Gulbarga IT Center

                                 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.

Srinivas Sirnoorkar (DH News)

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