Mangaluru, Aug 29: The Karnataka Digital Economy Mission (KDEM) has planned to hold a road show in Saudi Arabia’s Al-Khobar on September 7, to showcase the potential of the Karnataka’s coastal belt, especially Mangaluru, to attract in IT/ ITES, back-end offices.
KDEM is an initiative of government of Karnataka designed to function as the knowledge bridge between the government and industry to accelerate growth and investments in the field of Information Technology sector in the state.
KDEM’s Beyond Bengaluru initiative is another step that seeks to maximise the economic potential of emerging cities or regions outside the state capital, by enabling their organic growth, and inviting investments for startups or enterprises.
Mukesh S, head, Mangaluru cluster, KDEM, said that the idea is to highlight advantages of a Tier-II city; invite companies to open their back-end offices to leverage significantly lesser hiring and operational costs and avail government subsidies and availability of co-working spaces. This will help us augment a startup eco-system to retain fresh talent and also higher talent, at a later stage, building a robust ecosystem, he said.
Mukesh noted that the current employment potential of the coast is 15,000 in the IT/ ITES, back-end offices and it is already saturated, resulting in flight of talent.
“During the pandemic, close to two lakh people were working out of Mangaluru and Udupi, and even after it ended, at least 50,000 still prefer the WFH arrangement, indicating willingness on the part of the talent to stay here, if there are modest to moderate avenues of employment.
Vinod Pinto, president, CREDAI, Mangaluru Chapter, appreciating efforts of KDEM, said the initiative to attract the IT/ ITES back-end offices to the region will have a multiplier effect on real estate.
“It will increase the commercial and real estate requirement; create more job opportunities and revenue for the local, state and central governments. The tourism and hospitality sector, which is also one of the verticals of real estate, will improve,” he said, requesting the government to relook and improve the incentives to IT industries, for them to move beyond Bengaluru.
Comments
Add new comment