Bengaluru welcomes the 27th Bengaluru Tech Summit 2024, Asia's largest tech conclave that steers global innovation which is happening at Bangalore palace from November 19–21, 2024, hosted by the Department of Electronics, IT, and BT, Government of Karnataka highlighting Karnataka’s tech innovation. The Honorable Chief Minister of Karnataka, Siddaramaiah, inaugurated BTS 2024 witnessed by national and international dignitaries in the presence of  Priyank Kharge, minister for Information Technology & Biotechnology and Rural Development & Panchayat Raj, Govt. of Karnataka.

BTS 2024 Theme

BTS's main concept is ‘Breaking Boundaries,’ to the next level this year with ‘Unbound.’  The event is to witness limitless creativity, cooperation, and expansion throughout the global IT & Deeptech, ESDM, Biotech & LifeTech, and Startup ecosystems as the boundaries between countries, industry sectors, and cultures continue to blur. BTS 2024 has built on its 26-year history by providing a single platform for the whole tech ecosystem, including communities, countries, and businesses, as well as government, academic, and research and development enablers, to discover global technological solutions. With over 450 different speakers in 85+ conference sessions and a multi-pavilion exhibition, BTS 2024 offers a crucial chance for entrepreneurs, researchers, technologists, and global leaders to network and create cross-border, cross-sectoral, and cross-community partnerships.

Industry Defining Thoughts by Leaders

Kris Gopalakrishnan, Chairman, Axilor Ventures, Chairman - VGITE, Govt. of Karnataka says, “Any product you think about in the world, there is some part of Bangalore inside that product because some part of that product, hardware, software, or design, was developed in Bangalore. The GCC policy continues to push the boundaries on what is to be done. So, from a training perspective, now you train 100,000 people on some of the latest skills because that's very important for the GCCs. The second is to ensure that we create a policy framework that allows us not just to develop, and design but even test it in Karnataka, which is the AI policy. All this is possible because of the collaboration between industry, academia, and government. This event itself is a demonstration of that because we work very closely together. We put the data from all the stakeholders in every step of the way, and that's the reason why I believe that Karnataka is number one, has stayed number one, and will continue to stay number one.”

“We intend to get 500 new GCCs. We intend to have $50 billion being churned out because of the policy in the next four to five years. If I need to cater to that scale, I need to cater to the bottom of the pyramid, and that is skilling. I need to ensure that I have the most talented human resources coming from the industry. For the first time, we are allowing corporates to use their corporate data from the CSR, and the government too can use this scheme. We are betting just like how IT-enabled services, the GCC policy is going to propel the nation for not just services, but I think R&D and innovations. It is not a single product that will go into the world market without a cut-out. I think thanks to the industry and the academic institutions, we will deliver on our promise,” adds Kris.

Dr. Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw, Executive Chairperson, and Founder - Biocon Limited Chairperson - Vision Group on Biotechnology- Government of Karnataka says, “I'm excited about new biology. What do I mean by new biology? New biology is technology-driven biology. We could never do anything like what we can do today with biology. Computational power, they understand, sort, segregate, and infer from what we see and analyze.  Let’s take the example of the human body itself, are the most complex data lake that you can ever think of. How is it that we, through whatever you might call it, most of biology, in nanoseconds, we can look at all the data that's out there, sort it, segregate it, analyze it, annotate it, and respond? This is the marvel of biological systems.” 

“Let’s look at what is challenging human beings today. One is this whole understanding of energy and energy storage. We talk about biofuels, that's biotechnology. You learn how to convert starch to energy, and ethanol to energy. Let's start with solar power. Solar power today is one of the biggest renewable energy sources that we are looking at, in combination with wind energy. The biggest challenge is storage. Plants have been storing solar energy through photosynthesis for a long time. How do we learn from photosynthesis and solar storage, solar energy storage from plants, and convert it into a big biotechnology? That's just one example,” Kiran Continues.

“Artificial intelligence(AI) is an iterative, large-language, modern understanding. So, it's based on existing knowledge, and existing data. But living systems don't just rely on existing, iterative information. They also have something called genetic data, genetic memory, based on which birds know where to migrate and how to migrate. For that they need AI, so-called iterative data, to make the world better. We have two types of intelligence. One is AI, and the other is genetic, human intelligence, and intuitive intelligence. That's where we need to get to. In the digital age today, we will be in the bioengineering age tomorrow, because there is a link to it. I'm very excited about the bioenergy policy because biomanufacturing is going to provide answers to many, many challenges that we face today. Whether it is energy, whether it is food, whether it is feed, whether it is biomaterials, we have a lot to gain. Today, between synthetic biology and cell-based fermentation through microbial or mammalian cells, we can look at disease in a very different way. We can look at nutrition in a very different way. We can look at sustainability in a very different way, adds  Kiran.

Prashanth Prakash, Founding partner - Accel India Chairman- Vision group on Startups- Government of Karnataka says, “I think there are two areas that I feel will define the next two years. One is what I call people plus AI. I think we're all very excited about LLMs and large language models. There's some opportunity there in India for languages. That's not where the opportunity is. These LLMs are not by themselves predictive. They don't have the right kind of specificity to address very deterministic problems for that they need knowledge maps.Knowledge maps have always been there. This is very interesting how in our IT industry, our technology field, we all get excited and there's enough hype generated on something. But the real is in embracing that, but building around that. So that's what I see today."

"LLMs help in representation and communication. Whether it's in healthcare, use or consume information directly produced by AI. You need people to verify and see if we are violating those edge cases and these can be very expensive,” adds Prashanth.

 

Priyank Kharge, Hon’ble Minister for Information Technology & Biotechnology and Rural Development & Panchayat Raj, Govt. of Karnataka says, “We need to start working on the next policy. I spoke about biomanufacturing, physician manufacturing, robotics, Aeros. The GCC policy that we put on the program and the cyber security policy are the outcomes of the previous contribution. In the last five years, we have delivered as products and we are already among some land for foundries. The background of the Karnataka system is 28 percent of all startups, so the government needs to push people more towards this by providing better policies, and better incentives.

“We need to build a strong foundation of academics and skills. Top it up with incubation to drive innovations and inventions. Top it up with access, or market access, or commercialization, or perhaps even the government should start coming to the first customers, or provide them with the sandbox environment by it, and then bring the policies and go to market access for not just within the country, but also outside the country. We can build this solid pyramid, buy some skills for commercialization, and also adopt it within the government. I think that's where speed will happen. So bioengineering, biomanufacturing, precision manufacturing in this particular is something that we are very keen on, and we will probably, in a few month's life, have a blueprint for sin to ensure that we will have some kind of fertile environmental ecosystem for startups to come and collect,” adds Priyank.