Ep 45 - Uma Reddy | 1st Woman President of FKCCI in 108 Years | MSMEs& Bangalore's Industrial Future

She lost four times before she won. Then Uma Reddy became the first woman president of the Federation of Karnataka Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FKCCI) in the organisation’s 108-year history — a milestone for Bengaluru’s industrial story. An engineer from UVCE and founder of Hitech Magnetics, Uma has spent more than four decades building manufacturing capacity in Bangalore, supplying transformers, coils and defence-grade assemblies while fighting for better infrastructure and stronger MSME policies. In this episode of jimmyjimmytheshow, Jimmy sits down with Uma Reddy to trace a life that began drafting PCBs on a T-square and grew into running factories, representing small enterprises on the Prime Minister’s National Manufacturing Competitive Council, and now leading FKCCI. We discuss Bangalore’s manufacturing ecosystem, the real challenges facing MSMEs, the gap between India and China in industrial infrastructure, and what ‘Make in India’ must actually mean on the factory floor. Uma speaks plainly about inspector raj, minimum wages, industrial estates like Peenya, and the replicable model of Electronic City where industry runs and pays for the estate’s infrastructure. This interview hits the issues every manufacturer, policy-maker, and entrepreneur in Bengaluru should hear: how tax and power decisions affect gig workers and factory floors, why infrastructure investments are non-negotiable for global competitiveness, and how gender biases still make women prove their worth even in technical fields. From UVCE’s Sir M Visvesvaraya legacy to modern debates about ease of doing business, Uma connects history, policy, and lived experience into a compelling picture of Karnataka manufacturing