Indian team visits Finland to drum up support

Published : 28 Aug 2018, 00:34

Updated : 28 Aug 2018, 13:36

DF Report

(Left to Right) Titta Maja, Director, South Asia, Ministry for Foreign Affairs, Government of Finland, Mikko Pötsönen, Counsellor Economic and Commercial, Embassy of Finland in New Delhi, Juha Markkanen,Ambassador, External Economic Relations, Ministry for Foreign Affairs, Government of Finland, K J George, Hon. Minister for IT/BT&ST and Large and Medium Scale Industries, Government of Karnataka, Vani Rao, Ambassador of India to Finland and Estonia, Gaurav Gupta, Principal Secretary, IT/BT&ST, Government of Karnataka and Champa Eraiah, General Manager, KITS, Government of Karnataka. Press Release Photo.

An Indian delegation on Monday started a five-day tour to three European countries – Finland, Estonia, and France – to promote the upcoming Bengaluru Tech Summit scheduled for November 29.

The delegation is composed of Minister for IT/BT & ST and Large and Medium Scale Industries Shri K J George and Principal Secretary for IT/BT & ST Gaurav Gupta of the Government of Karnataka in India, among others.

The team during its visit in Finland focussed on biotechnology, said the Indian Embassy in Helsinki in a press release on Monday.

In Estonia the Indian delegation will focus on block chain, cyber security, etc and in France incubation ecosystem.

The team will contact those companies in particular that have signed MoUs with the Karnataka government on specific areas of work.

The purpose of the visit is to sustain these relationships and capitalise on them to forge potential partnerships by taking advantage of each other’s ecosystem.

“The trip is mainly to build better partnerships between academia, industry and start-ups of the respective countries so as to build up our ecosystem with innovation and new technology and to identify the right partners for fuelling our growth. A lot of growth in Karnataka start-ups is being driven by academic institutions, corporate entities, venture capital groups, and spirited individuals. What is necessary are the global partnerships so that our start-ups get exposed to what is happening in Finland and other countries and they also know of what is happening in India and Karnataka. It will give our start-ups an opportunity to scale up and understand how best to identify obstacles and find solutions. We the government also need to understand what kind of enabling environment has been created in these places so as to reproduce the same in Karnataka. Start-ups can thus become far more resilient and sustainable,” said Gaurav Gupta during his visit to Helsinki.

While companies from these countries visited Bengaluru a couple of times over the last one year, this is the first visit by Karnataka government officials to these countries.