About 630 technology professionals, many with over 10 years of experience and currently working outside coastal Karnataka, have expressed interest in returning to the Mangaluru-Udupi region under the HomeComing initiative of the Silicon Beach Program (SBP), Prashanth Shenoy, co-founder and chief technology officer of UniCourt, said here on Friday.

Speaking at the Silicon Beach Dialogue Series, organised by SBP, Mr. Shenoy said that of the 630 professionals, 300 have more than 15 years of experience.

The HomeComing initiative is aimed at transforming coastal Karnataka into a major technology and innovation hub by supporting experienced professionals in returning to the region.

Mr. Shenoy said coastal Karnataka currently has over 300 technology companies and 35,000 professionals, of whom approximately 22,000 are working from home.

Sanjeev Kumar Gupta, Chief Executive Officer of the Karnataka Digital Economy Mission (KDEM), speaks at the Silicon Beach Dialogue Series programme. | Photo Credit: H.S. MANJUNATH

The chief executive officer of Karnataka Digital Economy Mission (KDEM), Sanjeev Kumar Gupta, said the Mangaluru cluster of KDEM, comprising Mangaluru, Dakshina Kannada, Udupi, Uttara Kannada, and Kodagu districts, would have to start thinking very differently about an innovation layer for the growth of the technology ecosystem in the region.

He said the cluster has an amazing talent supply and that a significant portion of experienced talent is returning to the region to work from Mangaluru.

Mr. Gupta said the innovation layer comes by bringing academia and industry. “If we are not able to bring this together, this innovation layer will never come, and we will miss this bus,” he added.

Deepak Satya, Executive Managing Director of NTT DATA, speaks at the Silicon Beach Dialogue Series programme. | Photo Credit: H.S. MANJUNATH

Speaking on ‘Building high-impact tech teams beyond metros’, Deepak Satya, executive managing director (Cloud and Security - India head) at NTT DATA Group, called Mangaluru an “AI-ready city”.

Mr. Satya said NTT DATA, a Japanese company, acquired Udupi-based Niveus Solutions, a cloud engineering company specialising in Google Cloud Platform (GCP) services, in 2025 mainly after finding a “pool of talent” in the Mangaluru region. “Hiring talent is not a problem, but retaining it is. We got good retention,” he said, referring to the attrition rate.

Published - July 10, 2026 08:45 pm IST