'Beyond Bengaluru' to bring IT to other cities in Karnataka

The Karnataka state government has made the decision to decentralize the IT industry into cities other than Bengaluru. This plan was unveiled on Thursday, November 12 by Deputy Chief Minister and Minister of Information Technology and Biotechnology, Science and Technology, Dr. Ashwath Narayan as part of the Bengaluru Tech Summit that is to take place from 19-21 November.

The project, named 'Beyond Bengaluru' aims to make it possible to work efficiently from Tier-II and Tier-III cities.

For this, the government intends to give companies incentive to set up branches in cities like Mangaluru, Hubbali, Shivamogga, Mysuru, Belagavi etc.

At the moment, areas outside Bengaluru is only producing about 5% of the total revenue of the industry, making it rely heavily on the capital city. In order to build a 'technological ecosystem', the state has made the decision to set up a task force to take the idea forward.

Deputy Chief Minister Dr. Ashwath Narayan said, "A task force comprising industry, academia and other stakeholders has been set up to prepare a white paper to enable the 'Beyond Bengaluru' mandate. The paper will cover potential action points for promoting cities beyond Bengaluru by proposing initiatives to develop a technology ecosystem,"

The Beyond Bengaluru project is not the first attempt to decentralize the IT industry from the capital city.

However, no prior attempt has yielded significant results.