Real estate major DLF Limited which is developing an Infopark spread over an area of 54 acres in the city expects to resume construction work by the end of this month, said AK Panda, head, state IT promotion cell.
DLF’s facility is coming up in an approved IT SEZ (special economic zone) and the real estate player has got all the necessary clearances from the Centre and the state government.
In the first phase which is scheduled to be operational within two years. The Infopark will have a total built-up area of about four lakh sq ft and the project entails an estimated investment of Rs 120 crore.
Meanwhile, the first tower of Wipro’s proposed software development centre in the city is scheduled to be operational by the end of February this year, added Panda. Wipro’s development centre in the city had suffered a delay of nearly three months due to the prevailing economic slowdown.
The IT heavyweight, which is currently operating out of a rented facility in the city, has taken possession of about 26 acres of land in the Infocity area to set up its full-fledged centre. The company has already completed the construction of one tower, with a capacity to accommodate around 1,000 professionals.
Information technology (IT) projects in Orissa which had of late witnessed a slowdown in the aftermath of the global financial meltdown are expected to gather steam this year as the state IT department and the IT investors have renewed their commitment to expedite commissioning of the projects. In a high level meeting held on Wednesday, the state IT department reviewed the progress of the projects of the existing as well as the upcoming IT players. The meeting which was chaired by Pradipta K Mohapatra, the state IT secretary, had representatives from different IT investors like Wipro Technologies, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), Genpact, DLF and ICICI bank. TCS, India’s biggest software services provider inaugurated the first tower of its development centre called TCS Kalinga Park in the city earlier this month.
The first tower unit of the TCS centre has a capacity to accommodate nearly 1,200 professionals but the software major has only 250 employees at present. TCS aims to cater to its balance manpower requirement through a mix of fresh recruitments and redeployment of its employees from other centres.
Genpact Limited, the BPO (business process outsourcing) arm of the US-based General Electric has put up the boundary wall for its Global Delivery Centre. Construction work for this centre is expected to begin by March this year.
Genpact’s centre in the city will have a total built-up area of 7 lakh sq ft. Initially, Genpact would hire 500 people for running its operations and eventually, the headcount will be scaled up to 3,000.
Similarly, MindTree Consulting which was scheduled to commence construction work for its development centre in September 2008 has been asked to give a firm commitment on resuming construction work. MindTree will be investing Rs 200 crore for its development centre spread over 30 acres in the Infocity and it had a long-term manpower requirement of nearly 5,000 professionals.
Meanwhile, ICICI bank which had announced to set up its eastern regional hub in the city in May 2007 has submitted a fresh building plan to the Bhubaneswar Development Authority (BDA) after the recent notification of the recent building norms of BDA. The bank is now awaiting the plan approval from BDA as well as the environmental clearance from the Centre to start construction work.
With a built-up area of 1.5 million sq ft, the eastern regional hub of ICICI bank will have a pool of 15,000 employees in the long-run. The project is to be developed in phases over a period of six to seven years at an estimated investment of Rs 600 crore.
