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Karnataka Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai on Thursday (June 2) said that the state competes with the United States’ Silicon Valley when it comes to startups.

Speaking at the India Global Innovation Connect (IGIC), a two-day annual conference aimed at promoting India’s startup ecosystem, in the presence of global entrepreneurs, Bommai said that Karnataka is at the forefront of startup innovation, with Bengaluru being home to 400 Fortune 500 companies. 

“The Karnataka government will go any miles in supporting startups,” he said. “We are not worried about the competition. It keeps us going and growing. We convert the competition into acceleration.”

Stating that Karnataka was the first Indian state to introduce a startup policy, Bommai said that the seeds of the startup revolution were sowed by the Maharaja of Mysore who supported industrialisation, banking and innovation much before the country attained independence.

The northern California region of the US is referred to as the Silicon Valley. The area got its name due to the large-scale manufacturing of silicon transistors in the 1990s. Today, it is home to some of the biggest technology companies in the world, with the headquarters of giants like Apple, Google, Meta located over there.

Bengaluru is often referred to as the Silicon Valley of India given the booming information technology (IT) landscape in the city.

Bommai had earlier said that Karnataka will contribute $1.5 Tn to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s dream of making India a $5 Tn economy by 2025.

According to India’s Economic Survey 2021-2022, Bengaluru got 4,514 new startups between April 2019 and December 2021, and was at the second position, just behind Delhi. 

As India got its 100th unicorn last month, with Bengaluru-based neobanking startup Open joining the club of startups with a billion-dollar valuation, Karnataka’s capital city also got its 39th unicorn, the highest among all other cities in India.