The government of Karnataka has signed memorandums of understanding worth Rs 22,000 crore with seven companies such as Microsoft, data centre provider Web Werks and Japanese conglomerate Hitachi on the second day of the World Economic Forum 2024 in Davos, Switzerland.
Among them, Webwerks is looking to set up a data centre park of 100 MW in Bengaluru worth Rs 20,000 Cr. It already has a 80,000 sq. ft facility in Whitefield of 7.5 MW. “Webwerks expressed its ambition to establish a cutting-edge connectivity hub, featuring state-of-the-art hyper-scaler data centers in Bengaluru,” the state industries ministry said.
Besides this, four companies have entered into MOUs with the state government, which is collectively worth over Rs 2,000 crore. The government held talks with companies such as Volvo Group, Nestle, Sony, Inox Group, HP, Lulu Group, Honeywell, Takeda Pharma, Coinbase, and more.
Among them, Lulu Group plans to invest Rs 300 crore in a food processing plant in Vijayapura district dedicated to exports. BL Agro aims to install sorting, grading, and processing plants in Northern Karnataka, most likely in Vijayapura, while Coinbase expressed interest in collaborating with the government to train individuals in Web3.0.
“The primary objective is to establish cutting-edge infrastructure, capitalizing on the robust existing ecosystem and the highly attractive market dynamics in the region,” the statement said. The government also signed an MOU with Microsoft for a digital skilling initiative, while Hitachi signed an MOU for rural economic development.