The Kerala government has come out with an over Rs 20,000 crore investment package to promote Kerala as an IT destination. The government's main target is IT/ITEs companies which are planning further expansion and investment in Chennai and Bangalore.
The state government, through its arm Kerala State IT Infrastructure Ltd (KSITI), is planning to set up an IT city and IT parks across the state, which would have a seating capacity of 200,000 people by 2015.
The company will promote these projects through the PPP model.
The two key marketing words for KSITI are “continuous power supply” and “single window clearance”, which attracted several top companies for the road show held in Chennai.
N Radhakrishna Nair, director, KSITI, and CEO, Trivandrum Techno Park, said that Kerala, which was promoting tourism as “God’s Own Tourism Country”, now wanted to promote it as “God’s Own e-state”. IT/ITEs contributed around Rs 5,000 crore of revenue last year.
The state government is planning to set up a Techno City in Trivandrum with an investment of Rs 8,000-Rs 10,000 crore over 500 acres. Land acquisition is in the final stage, the new facility will come up close to the current Techno Park in Trivandrum. The new city will be developed under PPP model and it is expected to be ready by 2015. It will have facilities including residential flats, hotels, shopping malls, theaters and others.
KSITI is also planning to expand the Techno Park at Trivandrum which is spread over 130 acres of land. The company had acquired another 200 acres of land and construction work already started by Infosys and UST Global. Both the companies are planning to invest around Rs 1,000 crore. Currently the park employs around 20,000 people; by 2012 it is expected to employ around 100,000 people, according to Nair.
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When Techno City and Techno Park goes operational by the year 2015, around 200,000 people will be employeed, he added.
Speaking about the advantages Nair said "low cost and uninterrupted power and single window clearance" are the two main mantras. For instance, for IT/ITEs, the state is supplying power for Rs 3.20 a unit, whereas in Chennai it is around Rs 3.50 a unit, that too only for IT companies not for ITEs. In Kerala, since all the IT parks will be located near the Power Grids, IT companies don't have to depend on the local electricity board. The other advantage is power generation in Kerala is through Hybrid not by coal.
The single window will boot the investments, for instance if a company want to set up a facility in Kerala, the total time which would take maximum 4 weeks for all the clearance through a single window, said Nair. In Chennai, Infosys waited for four years to get approval for its Mahindra City facility. The Kerala state government has created industrial area act, which will allow the CEO of the park who is a non-IAS officer, as a signature authority.