Karnataka leads India’s technology economy by almost every measure, in IT exports, in unicorns, in deep tech investment, and in the scale of its startup ecosystem. The state’s recent policy architecture, spanning the IT Policy 2025-30, the Startup Policy 2025-30, the Deep Tech Decade, and Nipuna Karnataka, reflects a government that is not managing growth but actively engineering it. The question now is whether Karnataka’s graduating students are positioned to be the primary beneficiaries of the economy being built around them.
Shri Priyank M. Kharge, Hon’ble Minister, Department of Electronics, IT, Biotechnology and Science and Technology, Government of Karnataka in an exclusive interaction with Elets News Network (ENN), speaks on what this decade means for Karnataka’s graduates and what the state is building to ensure they lead it.
Karnataka has declared the next ten years as the Deep Tech Decade, backed by a ₹600 crore Deep Tech Fund and deeptech grants increased to ₹1 crore per startup. What does this decade mean for a science or engineering graduate in Karnataka, in terms of the careers, the companies, and the opportunities being created for them?
The Deep Tech Decade is Karnataka’s commitment to ensuring that the most consequential work in technology over the next ten years happens here, and that our graduates are at the centre of it.
Through the DeepTech Decade Programme, we have committed ₹600 crore towards a dedicated Deep Tech Fund. This is complemented by ₹1,000 crore under the Local Economic Acceleration Program (LEAP) to decentralise innovation and ₹150 crore for ELEVATE NEXT to support deeptech startups. We believe the next wave of innovation, whether it is AI, robotics, quantum, or biotech, will be built by people who are in their twenties right now, sitting in classrooms in this state. That kind of capital, directed specifically at deep tech, changes what is possible for a first-time founder coming straight out of a degree programme.
And this is not just a Bengaluru story. The Elevate Beyond Bengaluru Fund is specifically seeding startups in Mysuru, Mangaluru, Hubballi-Dharwad, and Kalaburagi. Because talent does not live only in one city, and we are not going to build a policy that pretends it does.
What this decade means for a graduate in Karnataka is that they do not have to go anywhere else to do the most exciting work of their generation. We are building the conditions for that work to happen here.
The Startup Policy 2025–30 targets 25,000 new startups with 10,000 from beyond Bengaluru. What is being done to make entrepreneurship a genuine career path for graduates from district colleges?
Entrepreneurship was never only a Bengaluru story. Talent exists everywhere in this state. Our job is to make sure the capital, the mentorship, and the infrastructure exist everywhere too.
Out of the 25,000 startups we are targeting under the Startup Policy 2025-30, 10,000 will come from outside Bengaluru. That is a hard commitment, not an aspiration. The Beyond Bengaluru Cluster Seed Fund, KAN, NAIN for students from IT and Biotech colleges in smaller cities, these are the instruments we have put in place. The capital is moving.
But the harder problem is not funding. It is that a student in Raichur or Chitradurga does not yet believe that their idea is worth backing. That belief is built inside a college, in the culture of the institution, in whether a professor tells you to get a safe job or to go build something. We are working to change that by bringing industry into campuses, co-designing curriculum, and making sure students interact with founders before they graduate.
The money is there. The policy is there. The job now is to make a student from a district college look at entrepreneurship and say, this is for me.
The Nipuna Karnataka initiative is positioning the state as a global talent hub. What does being a global talent hub actually mean for Karnataka’s graduating students and what skills, beyond technical qualifications, does the state believe will define the next generation of Karnataka’s technology workforce?
Being a global talent hub means one thing in practice. When a company anywhere in the world is building in AI, in quantum, in biotech, there is a Karnataka professional at that table. That is the actual ambition behind Nipuna Karnataka.
I have said this in every room I have walked into, Karnataka is not only India’s tech and investment capital, it is also its skill and knowledge capital, and we intend to keep that leadership intact by backing our people at scale. The Karnataka State Skill Development Policy 2025-32 with Rs 4,432 crore and a seven-year roadmap is what backs that commitment.
The professionals who will lead in AI, in emerging tech, in global companies, are the ones who can operate in ambiguity, build across cultures, and solve problems that have no precedent. That is what Karnataka’s workforce development is being designed around. Not just skilling for jobs that exist today, but readying people for work that does not yet have a name.
And on AI specifically, the disruptions will be brief. New jobs will emerge. Karnataka’s job is to make sure its graduates are the ones filling them.
Karnataka’s IT Policy 2025–30 targets 90 lakh jobs by 2030. What steps are being taken to ensure Karnataka’s own graduates are first in line for these opportunities?
The 90 lakh jobs target has been arrived at strategically. It is the output of a policy built around very deliberate choices about where growth happens and who it reaches.
The IT Policy 2025-30 is built around regional development. We are deliberately driving IT investments beyond Bengaluru so that opportunity reaches Karnataka’s graduates where they are, not just where they can afford to relocate.
We have also launched the IT Talent Return Programme, specifically designed to bring back mid-career Karnataka professionals working overseas, matching them with companies here in leadership, R&D, and mentoring roles. That brings expertise back into the state’s ecosystem and creates pathways for younger graduates to learn from them.
But the most important step is what is happening on the education side. Nipuna Karnataka, the Skill Development Policy, AEDP, these are not parallel tracks. They feed directly into the talent pipeline that the IT Policy is designed to absorb. The infrastructure for 90 lakh jobs means nothing if the graduates walking out of our colleges are not ready to occupy them. That alignment is what we are building.
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The Campus to Career Summit is Karnataka’s most significant step in aligning education with the demands of a rapidly evolving technology economy. What is the single most important message the Department of Electronics, IT, and Biotechnology brings to this platform for Karnataka’s students and institutions?
The single most important message is this. The economy is not waiting for education to catch up. The pace at which AI, deep tech, and emerging technologies are reshaping industries means that every year a curriculum stays unchanged, every year a college produces graduates without real industry exposure, which is a year of opportunity lost for that student. We cannot afford that anymore, and frankly, neither can the student.
What the Department of Electronics, IT & Biotechnology brings to this platform is a very clear position, industry and institutions cannot operate as separate worlds any longer. The companies building Karnataka’s technology future and the colleges preparing Karnataka’s graduates must be in the same room, making decisions together, not discovering each other at the placement fair.
Karnataka has the policies, the capital, and the ecosystem. What the Campus to Career Summit must deliver is the alignment. And that alignment starts with institutions understanding that producing a degree-holder is no longer enough, and with industry understanding that building talent is not someone else’s responsibility.
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