Basaveshwar Engineering College, Bagalkot

ABOUT BEC STEP

Bagalkot district has a strong agricultural base, as three rivers pass through the region. Many exotic fruits like pomegranate,sapota, guava, papaya are grown in considerablequantity. The major jowar, wheat, maize, turdal, sugarcane, cotton, groundnut, sunflower, and chili.

Realising the agriculture potential, Central Government and Government of Karnataka have identified Bagakolt district as “Industrial growth centre” in agro based industries and alloted 273 acres of land for establishment of “Agro Tech Park” at Navanagar. Many prospective entrepreneurs have been allotted for setting up of agro based industries. The district has a large concentration of handlooms and power looms with nearly 25000 handlooms and power looms. The products like sarees, Guledgudda khana are popular due to their unique features. But due to obsolete technique and changing customers’ requirements, this sectors needs proper reorientation.

Thousands have become homeless and lost their valuable lands, as a major part of Bagalkolt and surrounding 120 villages have submerged due to Upper Krishna Project. This has created unemployment of educated youth. All the villages have been shifted to Rehabilitation Centres and a new well planned city is coming up for displaced families of Bagalkolt in “Navanagar”. This has led to a large scale construction activities. Shortage of cost effective building materials and skilled labour are saught in this region. BasaveshwarVeershaiwaVidyavardhakSangha, which is running 110 Institutions in various fields thought of helping the unemployed youth of the region to start their own ventures. In this context the Science and Technology Entrepreneurs Park has been started under the aegis of Basaveshwar engineering college, which has the state of art laboratories and technical manpower. BEC-STEP, since its inception in the year 1999, has helped hundreds of Entrepreneurs in this region by way of identification of products/ processes, training, consultancy etc.