Bengaluru: Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities figured heavily in Minister for state for IT, BT, and Tourism Priyank Kharge’s speech at the three-day Bengaluruite.Biz on Tuesday.

Kharge said that it was not just Bengaluru and major software players but even Tier 2 cities such as Mangaluru, Mysuru, and Huballi-Dharwad and smaller IT firms were picking up pace when it came to software exports.

“With different policy interventions by the state government, we are trying to see that the startup companies in tier 2 cities contribute to the software services and also electronic products," Kharge said, adding that tier 2 cities contributed Rs4,000 cr of software exports to the state’s share of Rs 1.25lakh crore.

"The tier 2 and tier 3 cities are going from local to global,” said the minister. “Mangaluru has infrastructure equal to Bengaluru and an added advantage in the form of a port to export and import all kinds of services and goods. Similarly, Keonics IT park at Kalaburgi is ready to plug and play, while Belagavi is getting ready with an aerospace centre. From the government's perspective, we are trying to provide direct connectivity from Bengaluru to tier 2 cities. But all this will take time," he said.

Awards

The STPI in collaboration with the Karnataka government will be awarding 22 industries and startups which have been consistently doing well in exports, employment and other parameters. Among top ten, five industries are from tier 2 cities.

Software Paradigms Infotech from Mysuru and 99games online from Mangaluru had the highest share in IT exports while Sysinformation healthcare from Mysuru, Sankalp Semiconductor from Hubballi, Diya Systems from Mangaluru shared the top spot in the ITES category.