Fat paychecks on offer at Karnataka government's investment agency

Bengaluru: Facing severe competition from other states, Karnataka is overhauling its investment promotion agency by bringing in industry professionals to run the show with lucrative salaries, including a paycheck as high as Rs 90 lakh per year to a C-suite executive. 

The new-look Invest Karnataka Forum (IKF) will be headed by a chief executive officer from the IAS. Then comes a chief operating officer (COO), who will be an industry veteran at the level of a senior vice-president, to whom the government plans to offer a salary of Rs 70-90 lakh per annum. 

DH has learnt that the finance department has, for now, approved six positions in the first phase: investment promotion head (Rs 35-45 lakh package), four sector leads (Rs 30-40 lakh each) and head of market intelligence & analytics (Rs 20-25 lakh). 

The IKF is being bench-marked with some of the best investment promotion agencies — Guidance (Tamil Nadu), Invest India, Invest Chile, Singapore Economic Development Board and Invest South Africa.

"The existing structure of IKF is fragile, with a lack of clear focus on outbound investment promotion activity. There is a need to strengthen the IKF so that it can independently handle promotional activities to support the overall objective of bringing more investments to the state," a note drafted by the commerce & industries department stated. "IKF is supposed to be a full-fledged organisation on its own, but there is no dedicated team present within IKF (sic)," the note added.

Under the first phase, manager-level industry executives will be hired to lead investment attraction in four sectors: ESDM including semiconductors; e-Mobility including auto; core manufacturing; and FMCG, healthcare, pharma & biotech. 

COO and other positions will be recruited in the second and third phases. 

The government will form a recruitment committee comprising the industries commissioner, the IKF CEO, a representative of the knowledge partner (currently Boston Consulting Group) and someone from the IKF Board co-chaired by billionaire industrialist Sajjan Jindal. 

Karnataka, among India's top FDI recipients, has been trying to improve the ease of doing business.

Earlier this year, the government roped in computing giant Microsoft to design a new single-window system for a "simple and clear" regime to approve investment proposals.

In 2020-21, the government launched the affidavit-based clearance (ABC) system under which industries could start operations with a three-year window to obtain various permits. But this did not help as banks were unwilling to provide loans based on ABC.