Entrepreneurship-led economic growth is more inclusive: CM

Stressing that entrepreneurship-led economic growth is more inclusive, Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah today assured government's support to put in place policy measures for promotion of growth of industry and attracting early stage investments.

"Entrepreneurship tends to be innovation driven and will help generate solutions to several problems such as high-quality education, affordable health care, clean energy and waste management. Entrepreneurship-led economic growth is more inclusive and therefore is welcome," Siddaramaiah said addressing the ninth India innovation summit 2013, here. Stating that entrepreneurial growth can be accelerated by providing an enabling regulatory environment, ensuring adequate capital flow, he said "In this context, promotion of early-stage investments and attracting angel investors, ventures, seed funds and impact investors through development of appropriate policy measures and fiscal incentives becomes important." "I would like to assure that our Government extends its whole-hearted support to put in place policy measures for promotion of growth of industry and attracting early stage investments," he added.

Pointing out that Karnataka has some inherent advantages that could help entrepreneurship to emerge and flourish in the manufacturing sector, he said: "Strong manufacturing and engineering capabilities, large pool of skilled resources, large domestic demand, and the geographical size & location of the state offers it a strategic advantage for servicing global market along with other states in the country." He said urban infrastructure is expected to see over $600 billion of investment in next 20 years and electricity generation needs to more than triple despite the growth challenges for traditional power sources such as coal and gas.

Stating that Bangalore is emerging as an attractive destination for risk capital, Siddaramaiah said, "There is, however, a need to further improve entrepreneurial eco-system by enhancing availability of risk capital to entrepreneurs at start-up and early stage." Earlier speaking at the event, CII President S Gopalakrishnan suggested government to set up incubators at 10 engineering colleges in the state, 7 in Bangalore and 3 outside, to promote startups in the state.

He also suggested earmarking area at Information Technology Investment Region (ITIR) that is being developed as a research innovation and manufacturing hub to attract foreign research universities to set up incubators with public private partnership, extending metro service to ITIR region and encourage engineering students to take up entrepreneurship in lines with Kerala model by giving them 20 per cent attendance waver and 4 per cent grace marks.