THE SILICON STATE

India�s competitive advantage in Software sector is well known. Within India, Karnataka has been a leading state in Information Technology and is known as Silicon State of India. India reached $1.00 Billion mark in Software Export in 1997. Just after 3 years later, Bangalore alone has reached that mark. Rightly so, Bangalore is called the IT Capital of India. Karnataka offers several advantages for locating the IT companies in the State. Technical Manpower : Karnataka boasts of the best technical manpower in the IT in the IT sector. The State has 77 Engineering colleges and produce over 29,000 engineering graduates every year. Of these, 9775 graduates are from the IT related sector.

Higher Education

Karnatakas share in higher education is about 15% of the all India market. The State education has pre-eminent educational institutions. It is also has developed an excellent transparent system that attracts thousands of students from all over India as well as abroad. For instance, this year�s common entrance test examination was attended by 100,000 students, out of which 45,000 students came from outside the Karnataka State. Several special trains were run for the convenience of the students taking the examination. The Common Entrance Test examination is conduct in the most transparent way. The results are announced on the Internet and the admission to various colleges is carried out through sophisticated computerised system. Every student gets to see a menu of courses and colleges and gets a chance to choose. Students with higher rank get to choose their favourable college and course first. Research Institutes : The State has several important Research Institutes. Indian Institute of Science is one of the most important place of higher learning that offers most advanced courses in Engineering Information Technology, Pure Science, Biotechnology etc. Indian Institute of Management is one of the most premier institutes in India. In addition, we have Indian Institute of Information Technology, Bangalore (iii-b) that has been set up by Government of Karnataka. Iii-b : This institute offers advanced Postgraduate and Doctoral courses. The eligibility to take this course is a first class engineering graduation. The institute has the governing council headed by Mr. N R Narayana Murthy, Chairman, Infosys Technologies Ltd. The other member of the Governing Council are Mr. K V Kamath, m.d. & C.E.O., ICICI Limited. Mr. Som Mittal, CEO, Digital Equipment Limited; Mr. Ravi Sankar, CEO, iFlex (formerly Citicorp Information Services Limited); Mr Dewang Mehta, President, NASSCOM; Mr. M R Rao, Director, Indian Institute of Science; Mr. B V Naidu, Director, STPI; Mr. Vivek Kulkarni, Secretary to Government, Department of IT; Professor Sadagopan, Director, iiit-b.