PM Modi to inaugurate Bengaluru Tech Summit today

Bengaluru, Nov 19: Prime Minister Narendra Modi would inaugurate Karnataka's flagship annual technology event - Bengaluru Tech Summit 2020 (BTS2020) - on Thursday via video-conferencing. The event is to take place from November 19 to 21. It is being organised by the government of Karnataka along with Karnataka Innovation and Technology Society, the state government's Vision Group on information technology, biotechnology and startup, and Software Technology Parks of India.

"We have made elaborate arrangements to make BTS a grand success as the event sessions are going 100 per cent virtual," Deputy Chief Minister and the Minister for IT, BT and S&T C N Ashwath Narayan said after visiting the BTS2020 facilitating centre set up here. Australia Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Vice-President of Switzerland Guy Parmelin would be among those addressing the virtual event.

Over 25 nations are participating in the 23rd edition of the event along with thought leaders, industry captains, technocrats, researchers, innovators, investors, policy-makers and educators from India and different parts of the world, the officials said.

"The event will have the participation of more than 200 Indian companies setting up their virtual exhibition, more than 4,000 delegates, 270 speakers, around 75 panel discussions and more than 50,000 participants every day," an official statement said. This year, the theme of the summit is ''Next is Now.''

The summit would deliberate on key challenges emerging in the post-pandemic world with a focus on the impact of prominent technologies and innovations on the domains of information technology and electronics and biotechnology. Some of the key focus areas of the summit are aerospace and defence technologies, healthcare, future of work, startup for public good, electronics and semi-conductor, reimagining digital health and "COVID-19 Pandemic Preparedness", officials said