Karnataka To Set Up Not-For-Profit Firm To Woo Investment

BENGALURU: The Karnataka government plans to set up a separate company to atrract more investment into the southern state. 

Industries Minister R V Deshpande said the state is in the process of forming a 'Section 8' company which will have majority industry participation to encourage investments in Karnataka.

"Six out of nine directors in this company will be industrialists," he said. 

The minister, who was speaking at the CII Innovation Summit 2016, claimed that it was the first of its kind initiative of any government in the country. 

Section 8 companies are not-for-profit companies. 

Speaking at the event, Tata Group Chief Technology Officer Gopichand Katragadda said that as many as one billion Indians will be online by 2030 and digital payments will account for USD 500 billion by 2020. 

He also said there is an ample scope for entrepreneurs in energy segment, which will exceed USD 800 billion in 2015. 

"In 2025 the energy segment, will exceed 800 billion USD, including generation, transmission and distribution. There is ample scope for entrepreneurs in this segment," he said. 

Katragadda said the freight and passenger aircraft market will be USD 100 billion by 2025. 

"Healthcare is another area for collaboration where the percentage of GDP can be grown from 4 per cent to 5.5 per cent by 2022," he said. 

Katragadda also said Tata Group spends close to 2.5 per cent of total revenues in R&D and it likes to see more companies step up and put their legs on the gas pedal. 

"The current spend comes from a few companies. We would like to see more companies where technologies are the differentiator to step up and put their legs on the gas pedal," he told ET Now channel. 

On Tata Group's focus and strategy on startups, Katragadda said it has a multi-pronged approach and Tata Industries, which is a part of Tata Group, incubates new businesses. 

"So for Bangalore (Bengaluru) we have the digital health team and also the big data analytics team.The Group Technology office incubates new technologies. As part of this we also interact with startups," he said.

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