Karnataka signs eight MoUs with various countries

The government of Karnataka Friday signed eight Memorandum of Understanding (MoUs) agreements with five Global Innovation Alliance (GIA) partner countries at the ongoing Bengaluru Tech Summit 2020.

Bengaluru: Karnataka Government on Friday signed eight MoU with various countries including the US and UK, in various sectors, expecting huge investments in future at the Bengaluru Tech Summit 2020.

"We have signed MoUs with Finland, UK, Sweden, United States of America, Indiana and Virginia. We have signed another two MoUs with The Netherlands. So, altogether we have eight MoUs signed during the event. Huge investments will be made in various sectors," Karnataka Deputy Chief Minister Ashwath Narayan said.

Karnataka has signed the MoU with Business Finland for bringing the power of AI for agriculture, transport, health, safety, governance, and service delivery among other things, he said.

The initiative will also promote awareness of the development in the fields of AI for sustainable growth. Business Finland is a Finnish public actor that provides innovative financing and internationalization services. The organization employs 600 experts in 40 locations worldwide and 16 locations in Finland. The Business Finland team manages a 100 m EUR funded AI program.

Business Finland will collaborate with the Centre of Excellence for Data Science & AI, which is an initiative of the Karnataka Government and NASSCOM. It has been established to catalyze innovation and accelerate the DS & AI ecosystem with innovators, user enterprises and academia.

It provides a multi-technology platform for cloud computing capabilities, APIs and public data for catapulting innovation, industry-oriented research, in addition to building talent and upskilling.

The MoU between Karnataka and Sweden will facilitate innovative applications and domain capability across sectors such as Smart City, Smart Health, Smart Manufacturing, Smart Agriculture, and others, Narayan said.

The collaboration will position Karnataka as a provider of the end-to-end solution in engineering space and create the environment for product creation, testing and validation, he said.

Swedish Incubators and Science Parks (SISP) is Sweden´s national association for business incubators and science parks.

SISP is a non-profit association with national coverage, its 65 members (organizing 43 business incubators and 33 science parks) having 5000 companies with more than 70,000 employees.

SISP will collaborate with the Centre of Excellence for the Internet of Things, which is a large deep-tech innovation ecosystem in India comprising of startups, innovators, enterprises and the government. It is established in partnership with NASSCOM and focuses on solving real-world challenges using technologies like IoT, AI, Data Science, Big Data, AR/VR, Machine Learning and Robotics through extensive academic research and startup collaboration.

The MoU between and the UK will help in the creation of citizen-centric AI solutions by startups to pave way for a green and sustainable future, he said. It will also incorporate Data Science & AI readiness into industry professionals, students & research scholars, Narayan said.

The MoU between Karnataka and USA aims for strong infrastructural support and incubate early-stage startups and provide exposure to international companies such as Applied Materials. It also aims to accelerate the existing fabless SMEs to the next level to encourage domestic innovation and generate more employment in the ESDM sector, Narayan said.

The Applied Materials, Inc. is the global leader in materials engineering solutions for the semiconductor, flat panel display and solar photovoltaic (PV) industries. It has projects across a number of different areas including life sciences, healthcare, flexible electronics, energy, aerospace coatings.

Applied Materials also has 3 labs in Whitefield, Bengaluru which hosts the Company’s design and engineering work. It has given academia grants of INR 80 crores over the last 10 years.