At Bengaluru Tech Summit, calls for a national robotics body and bridging gap with China

New Research Development and Innovation Policy

Bommai also released the Karnataka Research Development and Innovation Policy, which aims to provide support for a robust and well-connected ecosystem and easy access to a skilled talent base, grassroot innovators, support for university-based cutting-edge research, and researching enterprises for cooperation between industry and science and for innovative business startups.

To expand the financial reach of the research and innovation ecosystem, each department of the state government will earmark their budget for research and innovation activities.

To expand the financial reach of the research and innovation ecosystem, each department of the state government will earmark their budget for research and innovation activities. To achieve the target of a national average of 0.7 per cent of GDP and 2-3 per cent of state GDP in the next five years, additional funding from state government agencies is proposed to increase by 0.1 per cent of state GDP every year.

Industry captains for national robotics body

Ajay Gopalswamy, CEO of DiFACTO Robotics and Automation, has called for setting up a National Robotics Association of India on the lines of Nasscom to set standards and safety norms besides giving innovation a boost.

Speaking at a session on “Building a robotics ecosystem for the developing world: Challenges and Opportunities”, he said robotics should become the future of manufacturing in India and set a target of making 100,000 robots by 2030 in the country, which he said was achievable.

Kamal Bali, president and MD of Volvo Group India, said there wais a need for a collective leadership in propelling the sector by taking a 360 degree approach to finding solutions. He said funding was not a constraint but added that logistics accounted for 14 per cent of GDP in India, which is higher than the worldwide average of 8 per cent.

Experts also said India should be able to bridge the gap between India and China. Positioned tenth in the sector, India managed to sell 5,000 robots in 2021, while China sold 270,000 robots and stood at the top.

‘Genome plateau of India’

India’s research investment value is $80-$90 billion. According to Dr Vijay Chandru, co-founder and director of Strand Life Sciences, the value has a target of becoming $300 billion by 2030 and $500 billion by 2040 and this level of development and the success stories in the field of genome-sequencing qualify Bengaluru to be considered as the genome plateau of India, he said. He was speaking at a panel discussion on “genomics revolution 2.0 and its implications”.

Experts also said India should be able to bridge the gap between India and China. Positioned tenth in the sector, India managed to sell 5,000 robots in 2021, while China sold 270,000 robots and stood at the top.

Dr Joydeep Goswami, senior vice-president (corporate development and strategic planning) at Illumina Inc., emphasised the democratisation of genomics that is aligning countries across the world to cater to personalised medicine from a diagnosis-and-treatment perspective.

He opined that genomic profiling at birth, early screening for diseases, particularly cancer, progress through the effectiveness of monitoring and other sequencing timelines are transforming life cycles of individuals. Dr Ramesh Hariharan, CEO and co-founder of Strand Life Sciences, explained that over the last five-seven years, there had been an increase in the ability to tease out the efforts of identifying the bioinformatics of monogenic diseases.

Dr Bratati Kahali, an associate professor at the Centre for Brain Research at the IISc, explained the necessity of the centre’s Genome India Project to identify genetic variation in Indians as various studies presented the fact that gene bases and drugs mostly identified by Europeans were only 50 per cent informative to identify the position of such genes among our population.

‘Rs 36,804-cr investments in Karnataka electronic sector’

Dr C N Aswath Narayan, minister for IT-BT, science and technology, said various electronic companies had evinced interest in putting up their production units at a cost of Rs 36,804 crore in various parts of the state.

He said Bengaluru had made rapid strides in the science and technology sectors and become the cynosure of all eyes the world over. The government has set an ambitious target of achieving a target of $300 billion in IT and BT exports by 2025 from the present $135 billion, he added.

He said Karnataka was emerging as a hub for semiconductor design and that the state had attracted investments worth Rs 22,900 crore in the semiconductor industry.

35 companies felicitated

As part of the concluding event on day 1, 35 Bengaluru-based companies across information technology and biotechnology were felicitated for their contribution to technological revolution and development of the state and its capital over the past 25 years. The companies included Wipro, ANZ Operations and Technology, Oracle, Tata Eixsi, Infosys, Siemens Technology, Tally Solutions, Honeywell India, Intel India and Biocon.