US companies express interest to invest Rs 25,000 cr in Karnataka

Bengaluru: The Karnataka government on Thursday said several American companies have evinced interest to invest around Rs 25,000 crore in the state.

Jointly addressing a press conference regarding the outcome of the visit by a business promotion delegation headed by them to the US, Large and Medium Industries Minister M B Patil and Electronics & IT/BT Minister Priyank Kharge said some of the companies are already in the process of investing around USD one billion in the state.

During the visit that spanned from the east coast to the west coast of the US, a total of 36 interactive meetings were held.

"While some companies have planned to commence their operations here some others have proposed to expand their already existing operations. Our discussions primarily focussed on semiconductors, aerospace and defence, electric vehicles, space, and precision manufacturing," Patil said.

Discussions were held with leading companies like Applied Materials, AMD, Juniper, Global Foundries, LAM Research, Boeing, Krypton, Dell, MKS Instruments, GE Healthcare, Intelsat, RTX, Teradyne, Texas Instruments, Apple, and Waters Corp.

The delegation also met with a few promising startups like Leolabs, Fictiv and T-Second.

Noting that the purpose of the visit to the US was to underline the status of Karnataka as a promising destination for investment, Patil said the trip was necessary and important considering the fast-changing geo-political dynamics as a large number of global companies are looking at India, especially Karnataka, as an attractive, safe destination for new investment or expanding their existing presence.

"The delegation has reassured the investors that Karnataka is an attractive and favoured destination with its industry-friendly policies, lucrative incentives, availability of technically qualified skilled workforce, and abundant availability of natural resources," he said.

The themes of discussions with industry leaders were centred around joint skilling initiatives, expansion of the supplier base, strengthening the existing R&D ecosystem, and collaboration on establishing Centers of Excellence with the state government.

"We have offered all possible support to the companies to invest in Karnataka and briefed the senior executives of global companies about the state's ease of doing business, favourable policies, sectorial incentives, and industrial infrastructure built in the state. Our main objective was to showcase Karnataka as an attractive investment destination," Patil said.

Kharge said that the purpose of the visit to the US was to attract investment at a time when not only China but other states within the country are competing with each other to attract investors.

"We have come out with an innovation in our approach to reach out to the investors and went to their doorsteps in the US to convince them about the opportunities to invest in Karnataka. The state government is tying up with AMD to train engineers based on the syllabus provided by the company to meet their requirements for human resources. AMD will be hiring 800 engineers in India', he said.

Kharge also stated that the government would organise a global start-up summit in Bengaluru next year.