Industry, govt, academia collaboration in focus at Bengaluru Tech Summit

Biocon Chairperson Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw said efforts should be made to ensure the government becomes the first user of innovations from startups

At the Bengaluru Tech Summit (BTS) 2024, top leaders called for greater collaboration between the government, industry, and academia to achieve better outcomes in developing and commercialising innovations.

 

Priyank M Kharge, Minister for Electronics, IT, Bt, and Rural Development and Panchayat Raj, Government of Karnataka, said the government aims to attract the establishment of 500 new Global Capability Centres (GCCs) in Karnataka. The target is to achieve 1,000 GCCs in the state by 2029, creating 3.5 lakh new jobs and generating an economic output of $50 billion by the same year. To achieve this, the government has introduced a Global Capability Centres (GCC) Policy.

 

 

“Karnataka has been ahead of the curve due to the collaboration between the government, academia, and industry,” said Kharge. “We need to ensure we have the most talented human resources catering not only to the local ecosystem but also to the global ecosystem.”

 

The Karnataka government also unveiled Nipuna Karnataka, an initiative to enhance the skills of local talent and improve their global competitiveness in emerging technologies. The government is collaborating with global tech giants such as Microsoft, Intel, Accenture, IBM, and the BFSI Consortium to drive innovation and train 1,00,000 trainees in the next year, with a target placement rate of 70 per cent.

 

Biocon Chairperson Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw urged the government to act as the first user of innovations from industry, especially startups. She cited the example of Simputer, a handheld computer released in 2002 and envisioned as a low-cost alternative to personal computers. Despite its potential, the product achieved limited commercial success due to insufficient government support.

 

Shaw highlighted significant opportunities in technology-driven biology and biomanufacturing.

 

She pointed to breakthroughs enabled by artificial intelligence (AI), mentioning the 2024 Chemistry Nobel Prize awarded to John Jumper and Demis Hassabis of Google DeepMind for developing AlphaFold, a groundbreaking AI tool for predicting protein structures.

 

“I am very excited about the predictive aspect of drug design. There are a lot of interesting startups in these domains,” said Shaw. “If we are in the digital age today, we will be in the bioengineering age tomorrow because that is where the future is heading. Biomanufacturing will provide answers to many challenges we face today, including energy, food, and biomaterials.”

 

India’s recently launched BioE3 policy aims to facilitate sustainable and efficient utilisation of biological resources for innovation, scaling up, and biomanufacturing of specialty chemicals, enzymes, bio-polymers, functional foods, smart proteins, veterinary products, precision bio-therapeutics, and services.

 

Prashanth Prakash, partner at venture capital firm Accel, identified new opportunities in areas such as Large Language Models (LLMs) for local languages, precision manufacturing, and new materials.

 

He noted that while LLMs are not inherently predictive or specific enough for fields like healthcare and finance, combining them with knowledge graphs can address these limitations. “LLMs help communicate information to the end user, but the real power lies in knowledge graphs,” said Prakash.

 

Knowledge graphs structure and link information in a graph-like format, extracting data from multiple datasets and applying identities and schemas to provide context and organisation.

 

Prakash also highlighted that areas such as healthcare and legal domains require human verification for information produced by AI. “This is where India’s power comes into play. We have the engineering capability to bridge this gap,” he said.

 

He pointed to opportunities in precision manufacturing, particularly in aerospace, where Karnataka already has a strong foundation. “We now have 15-20 startups in India building precision manufacturing solutions for aerospace,” said Prakash. “The future lies not just in software but in intelligent heavy assets. It is about combining software with smart manufacturing and sustainability.”