Kerala today made its strongest pitch today to attract IT investment into the state.
Bouyed by the recent Nasscom-Mckinsey study which ranked the state at number two in terms of business process outsourcing (BPO) potential, the state government today announced a new intellectual property right (IPR) initiative and said that it had categorised IT and IT-enabled services (ITES) as public utility services.
Speaking at a press conference, minister for IT, government of Kerala, P Kunahalikutty, said the state would promote the ethic of responsible use of intellectual properties, promote free exchange of ideas, while protecting the economic interests of copy right owners.
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He said the state had signed up with leading ITES training majors for focussed BPO and customer relationship management (CRM) training, thus becoming one of the few states to do so in the country.
He said the state was also setting up a dedicated BPO park apart from embarking on a branding strategy that was similar to what the state had done for its tourism initiative some years back.
The state he said had total exports, inclusive of hardware and software, in the region of Rs 700 crore and had witnessed investments in the region of Rs 200 crore in the last three years.
He said the state was in talks with leading Indian and multinational companies to set up a base and some very big names are expected to sign up in the near future.
To this end he said that customised packages would be offered to big IT and ITES names who would be setting shop in the state.