Vice President Venkaiah Naidu flags off Bengaluru Tech Summit-2021

Vice President M. Venkaiah Naidu on Wednesday called upon innovators and entrepreneurs to focus on solving the issues that the agricultural sector of the country is facing and create ideas to better the lives of farmers.

Inaugurating the 24th edition of Karnataka's flagship three-day technology event 'Bengaluru Tech Summit-2021' themed 'Driving the Next' here, he said Bengaluru is at the forefront of India's knowledge wealth and is rightly called the knowledge capital of India.

The Vice President said it has become necessary to transform IT and BT "by doing our duty to become mighty" in creating knowledge wealth for the country.

He added that ultimately the aim of technology and innovation should be to bring happiness to the people and their lives.

Naidu said there is a need to share and care when it comes to knowledge and ideas which is at the heart of India's philosophy.

He said the summit should also focus on agriculture which is facing turbulence and the challenges that are being posed to mankind by climate change notwithstanding the ongoing pandemic that the world is undergoing.

"We should come up with new ideas through innovation to encourage the growth of the knowledge economy and ensure that we reform and perform better to transform India into the new economy," the Vice President said.

Naidu called upon private entrepreneurs to create jobs in the new economy even as government initiatives were crucial to its growth.

He started his speech in Kannada and later switched over to English after uttering quite a few sentences in the local language. In the beginning, he extended condolences on the death of Kannada actor Puneeth Rajkumar, who died of a cardiac arrest on October 29.

IT & BT, Science and Technology Minister C.N. Ashwathnarayan said that Bengaluru is the hub of future technologies and Karnataka is the leader in IT and BT.

He said Karnataka is the first state to implement the National Education Policy and expressed confidence that the new policy will take the state to greater heights.

Naidu also expressed happiness that technology is now reaching other cities of Karnataka.