Karnataka invites Chinese companies to hardware park

The Karnataka government on Tuesday strongly urged Chinese hardware manufacturers to set up operations in the hardware park which is being proposed near the new international airport being built at Devanahalli, about 35 kms from here.

Speaking at the Sino-India Cooperation Summit 2006, organised by Nasscom in Bangalore on Tuesday, Shankaralinge Gowda, IT secretary, Karnataka government said: "The Chinese have expertise in hardware manufacturing and India requires their expertise in this field. The Hardware Park which is being finalised will benefit a lot from the Chinese specialisation and we have invited the Chinese company to play a major role."

He further added that there needs to be further co-operation between the Indian and Chinese IT industry and "we should address the global markets on a combined basis." Echoing similar sentiments, Kiran Karnik, president, Nasscom added that "we both should work with each other and not against each other."

Fan BoYuan, vice-mayor of Beijing, leading a high-level delegation from China said: "National economies are dissolving to global economies. We should not compete with each other but co-operate. We seek active guidance and suggestions on how we can build expertise in software development from India and we look forward to partnership with Indian companies."

Jayant V Pendharkar, Vice President and Head, Global Marketing, TCS said: "There is immense expertise in the embedded space in India and China has the specialisation in manufacturing hardware. Our countries should put in efforts to build a cost-effective PC with these capabilities. There is a big opportunity ahead of us and we can certainly look ahead for the Asian Century in IT. Global players should not be confused on the issue of India or China, but it should be India and China."