Speaking at the opening keynote of ESC Bangalore this morning, Ashok Kumar Manoli, principal secretary at the government of Karnataka's Department of Information Technology, Biotechnology and Science & Technology, pointed to key statistics: 38 percent of all software exports and 80 percent of India's chip-design capability are sourced out of Bangalore.

"But the transfer of design to manufacturing is not there," he said, "mainly because the hardware part is dominated by China. But it's time we made a new beginning."

The desire to break that software-only dependence and move into hardware manufacturing has been discussed by Bangalore's state government officials for many months, however, with few details emerging on exactly how it would be accomplished.

Speaking at the same keynote, Richard Wallace, vice president of global business development and editorial director of TechInsights (of which EETimes is a part) made it clear with the launch of TechOnlineIndia.com that he believes ongoing education is essential to India's progress in this regard.

Positioning the site as the go-to information and e-learning site for IC and electronic system designers, Wallace pointed to the site's suite of courses, features, Webinars, teardowns, VirtuaLabs and technical papers as a means to filling any knowledge gaps designers may have, whether they are newly graduated and getting up to speed on the job or old hands learning new skills.

Education may have its place when it comes to tackling the transfer-to-manufacturing issue Manoli described, but the political and infrastructure problems in the region clearly hold sway.