Bloggers are not considered so seriously compared to main stream media. I was happy when I received invitation to meet Mr.Vidyashankar, Secretary IT, BT , Science & Technology, Government of Karnataka. Three fellow Bangalore bloggers (Blog?A’loreans) Sourabh , Hari & Arun joined me to attend meeting.

The Big Picture:

Vidyashankar started with statistics on how IT industry is playing important role in Karnataka. IT industry contributes 26% of state?s GDP (Gross Domestic Product) & 4% of nation?s GDP. IT industry employs about 4.9 lakhs of people which is even more than that of state government which employs 4.5 lakhs of people.

Knowing that Bangalore is filled out & cannot accommodate more IT companies, he explained us what are the steps government is taking to provide better infrastructure to new establishments. He showed us a big plan on chart having FIVE townships in outer Bangalore. These five townships are of 60,000 acres of land starting with ?Knowledge City? at Bidadi with 10,000 acres of land. Bidadi project will be given to DLF, according to him which is the best company that has capability to handle such a big project. The company which purchases office space at these townships, will compulsorily have to buy residential flats. This will be calculated as per thumb rule specified by IT industry. For Ex: If I purchase 1000 Sq.Ft of office space that can accommodate 30 employees, then I also need to buy residential flats for 30 employees.

All the townships will be connected to Bangalore International Airport through EIGHT lines non stop highways. This path will be radial which doesn?t touches Bangalore. According to his estimation distance between Bidadi & International Airport will be about 36Kms & will take 20 minutes of journey. But in this project connecting townships to the center of the city is not taken care. The point he said was ?company which buys office space will have to buy residential flats? forcing people to stay there. He also said townships will have everything that Bangalore has. Shopping Malls, Theaters, Shops, Hospitals ?etc. But I think this is not a valid point, because there are lot other reasons which people will have to commute to center of the city.

Starting of other township projects depends on success of Bidadi project. When Bidadi gets accumulated 90%, then they will start ?Nandi Graama? township and so on. As per the map he showed ?Nandi Graama? is very near to International Airport. One of the blogger made a point ?why you chosen Bidadi instead of Nandi Graama??. Vidyashankar cleared the doubt, this was a plan to make townships balanced. Since Nandi Graama is near to Airport, if they do this project first, it gets filled very quickly. And no body wants to go to Bidadi.

About BangaloreIT.in

BangaloreIT.in is scheduled on 29th of OCT to 1st of NOV. The theme of this BangaloreIT.in is ?Gateway to Asia?. To make Bangalore best choice if any body wants to establish their firm in Asia. This time BangaloreIT.in will be industry driven. Government will setup the platform & letting industry leaders to drive this event. He admitted that BangaloreIT.in has slipped a lot, & they are trying hard to get that back on track. This time venue is Bangalore International Exhibition Center on Tumkur Road. This is chosen to make exhibitions & conference under one roof. Bus facility will be there from all parts of Bangalore to the venue. They took few other good steps to bring more crowd, such as free entry pass to students (in which college should ask for passes), separate bus for college to commute if required. Every visitor will be tracked with RFID cards. Which shops he visits, how much time he spends over a shop?etc. This helps exhibitor to track people who were really interested in making business with them.

Few of suggestions given by us to improve BangaloreIt.in. As Arun pointed, branding Bangalore is not at all required, it?s already known to world. More companies getting interested in putting their establishment in Bangalore is incidental. There is no need to make BangaloreIT.in a platform to sell out Bangalore. We need to give a good branding to BangaloreIT.in to make it more bigger platform to big product launches. Arun also suggested to have second tier IT guys to get involved in driving this event. Vidyashankar accepted our suggestions & gave us a hope that he will try to implement them.

Thanks to Maya Naresh of Text100 (www.text100.com) who are handling PR (Public Relations) of BangaloreIT.in for organising this meet.