Bengaluru, Dec 9 (IANS): The government of Finland has expressed interest to collaborate with Karnataka in the areas of Artificial Intelligence (AI), energy, career placement among others, an official said on Thursday.

In the Finland-Karnataka innovation corridor, an MoU steering committee meeting held between the delegation of Finland headed by Ritva Koukku-Ronde, Ambassador of Finland and C.N. Ashwath Narayan, Minister for Higher Education and IT/BT, these matters were discussed.

During the meeting, Ritva Ronde told that the Embassy values the collaborative scheme highly and wants to maintain close relationships with the Karnataka government, its business sector and academia.

"The delegation also expressed its keenness about the start-up ecosystem of the state. Further, we (the government of Karnataka) have an open mind with regard to allowing the opening of pre-schools in the state by entities of Finland," Narayan said.

In addition to this, we look forward to collaborating with Finland for 'training the teachers' programme under which Finland will help us to train the faculty of the state, Narayan said.

Jukka Holappa, Country Director - Business Finland, Jukka Ilomaki, Counsellor, Embassy of Finland, Mika Tirronen, Counsellor, Embassy of Finland, Suresh Kumar of FINCHAM (Finland Chamber of commerce in India) were also present at the meeting.