Media Release
Mangaluru, Apr 11: Coastal Karnataka's higher education community came together in an unprecedented gathering on April 7, as Digii100x Mangaluru brought about 100 founders, institutional leaders, and academic decision-makers, alongside vice chancellors, principals, deans, and policymakers under one roof at Hotel Taj Vivanta to confront the most consequential questions facing the region's institutions today.
Digii100x Mangaluru marked another strong city chapter of the Digii100x series, designed as a closed-door, action-oriented gathering for institutional decision-makers. It was a room where the people who actually run Coastal Karnataka's institutions could speak plainly with each other and with the policymakers and industry voices who shape the conditions they operate in. Fireside chats, closed-door roundtables, panel discussions, and an unconference session kept the focus squarely on the region's shared challenges and practical next steps.
U T Khader, speaker of the Karnataka Legislative Assembly, graced the inaugural ceremony as chief guest, alongside Captain Brijesh Chowta, Member of Parliament (Lok Sabha), Prof Debashis Chatterjee, director of IIM Kozhikode. Prof T G Sitharam, former chairman of AICTE, addressed the gathering through a special video message played at the ceremony.
Captain Brijesh Chowta, MP, made perhaps the most concrete commitment of the day, stating on record that Mangaluru qualifies under all three of the Union Budget's priority frameworks: city economic regions, educational townships, and holistic healthcare and wellness regions. "I feel that Mangaluru fits into all these three categories," he said, adding that he is ready to work with the Karnataka government to send the right proposals to the Union government and realise the region's potential. "Together let us build a Mangaluru which is truly what we believe in."
U T Khader, speaker of the Karnataka Legislative Assembly, struck an unexpectedly candid note, acknowledging that institutions today are still educating students for jobs that may not exist within a decade. "Within 5 to 10 years, such jobs won't be there at all. It will be wiped out of the society, where new jobs come. And for that, something new is needed." He went further, turning to the assembled education and technology leaders with a direct ask: that they help bring AI into Karnataka's legislative assembly systems. "As the speaker, I'll try to implement it. When you give a suggestion for the government or for the MLAs, it's not only for the student, the entire society will benefit."
That the speaker of a state legislature was in the room asking an education-technology gathering to help modernise governance was, in many ways, emblematic of what Digii100x set out to create, a space where the usual boundaries between policy, academia, and industry simply don't hold.
Conversations across the day ranged from AI strategy and digital transformation to data privacy under the Digital Personal Data Protection Act (DPDPA), and the evolving relationship between industry and academia.
A fireside chat on 'Coastal Karnataka's Higher-Education Ecosystem: The Making and the Rise Ahead' anchored the regional perspective, with Dr HS Ballal, pro-chancellor of Manipal Academy of Higher Education (MAHE), reflecting on where the corridor stands and where it must go.
The room brought together an exceptional cross-section of the region's academic leadership, Mohammed Farhaad Yenepoya (pro chancellor, Yenepoya University), Vivek Alva (managing trustee, Alvas Education Foundation), Dr Praveen Martis (vice chancellor, St Aloysius University), and senior leaders from Nitte University, SDM Educational Society, and many others, alongside voices from Jio Platforms, Amazon Web Services, KPMG India, and Intel Corporation.
If there was one idea that captured what Digii100x Mangaluru was ultimately about, it came through in a provocation shared during the day by Hemant Sahal, Founder and CEO of Digii:
"How many of you went to a bank in the last one week? Banks have grown phenomenally, but we stopped going to them, because technology came in. India set the benchmark for the world on how tech can play a role in a sector not just for the top people of the society but across the whole sector. We believe the same is now non-negotiable for education."
The programmed was anchored very professionally and efficiently by R G D’Souza, dean , faculty of Engineering & Technology, Yenepoya deemed to be university. Digii100x Mangaluru closed with a clear sense of momentum, that Coastal Karnataka's institutions are not waiting for change to arrive but are actively shaping what comes next.