The Karnataka government announced that four industrial parks in Mysuru, Dharwad, Harohalli, and Kalaburagi would be dedicated to women.
Karnataka's minister for large and medium industries, Murugesh Nirani, said that this effort will boost women entrepreneurs and that this was the country's first exclusive park.
“Karnataka is the first state in India to set up exclusive industrial parks dedicated to women in Mysuru, Dharwad, Kalaburagi and Harohalli. This purpose will be served if women entrepreneurs take advantage of this initiative. Women should join hands with the government in driving industrial growth by taking up entrepreneurship and providing jobs,” Nirani said, according to a statement by the department on Thursday.
He was addressing after the UBUNTU Consortium of Women Entrepreneurs Associations hosted a 'Together We Grow' event for women entrepreneurs in Bengaluru to commemorate International Women Entrepreneurship Day.
The comments come as the state government strives to get more investors to set up shop outside of Bengaluru, where most of the big businesses are looking to profit from the business ecosystem that surrounds India's IT hub.
This drive to attract investors to tier-II and III cities has received a chilly reaction so far, as successive administrations continue to focus on Bengaluru's growth while allowing the rest of the state to fend for itself. As a result, people are migrating from small villages to Bengaluru, putting even more burden on the city's already stretched resources and poor public facilities.
“We are proud of the fact that today India has 13.5 – 15.7 million women-owned enterprises, representing 20% of all enterprises. Accelerating (the) quantity and quality of entrepreneurship towards such benchmarks can create over 30 million women-owned enterprises, and this is not an impossible goal,” he said.
The minister went on to say that recent revisions to the factories act of 1948 allow women to work night shifts and give women from SC/ST communities additional benefits.
