The Hindu : Tamil Nadu News : Seven IT majors show interest in Gangaikondan SEZ

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Monday, Mar 17, 2008
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Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu

Seven IT majors show interest in Gangaikondan SEZ

M. Dinesh Varma

Other Tier-II cities also being promoted
Facilities in OMR sector being upgraded

CHENNAI: As many as seven major IT players have shown serious interest in investing in the 500-acre Gangaikondan IT SEZ in Tirunelveli.

This follows a two-day roadshow that was held in January to help the top brass of nearly a dozen IT companies gauge first-hand the potential of the Gangaikondan IT Park in Tirunelveli.

C. Umashankar, managing director, Electronics Corporation of Tamil Nadu Ltd (ELCOT) told The Hindu that the whole process of land allotment was expected to be finalised by April-May. The focus, then, would shift to accelerating the ongoing infrastructure development process. Tirunelveli had centre staged the ELCOT charm both because of its proximity to Thiruvananthapuram’s Technopark and because of the availability of manpower (an annual output of around 16,040 engineering graduates and 26,500 arts and science graduates).

Also, by focussing on the southern hinge, the plan was to establish a “coast-to-coast” IT environment that stretched from Tirunelveli to Chennai.

ELCOT reckons that once the 500-acre SEZ is sold out like the ones in Chennai, Coimbatore and Madurai, the task of attracting clients would be much easier for the other Tier-II cities on the radar – Salem and Tiruchi.

In fact, Chief Secretary L. K. Tripathy had let in a group of potential investors on the Government vision for the IT/ITES industry. Addressing the group which had attended the Tirunelveli road show, he declared: “I’ll bat for Tiruchi also.” The message to IT companies eyeing expansion in Tamil Nadu was to have a serious look in the direction of other cities such as Salem, Tiruchi, Madurai and Hosur as well.

The intent in Tamil Nadu is to avoid the mistakes of its neighbour — Karnataka — by clustering IT growth around one or two centres (Bangalore-Mysore).

The Chief Secretary added that the Government was upgrading facilities in the OMR sector and other sites earmarked for IT business.

Social Welfare Minister Poongothai Aladi Aruna too urged IT firms, which had been impressed by Tirunelveli, to show a matching enthusiasm for investing in other Tier-II cities.

In fact, the ELCOT road map for the IT/ITES sectors enunciates the intent of Government to broadbase the growth story in Tamil Nadu and make it more inclusive, or in the words of an official “to push the wheels of ICT growth to the farthest corners of the State.”

NASSCOM is also partnering in the Government-ELCOT initiative to showcase the competitive edge of Tier-II cities. IT Secretary C. Chandramouli noted that to fully exploit the 500-acre site that has been freed for the IT sector at Gangaikondan, there had to be a software-hardware industrial mix in Tirunelveli. It was possible to envision the Tirunelveli SEZ as a fully self-reliant mega-township replete with hospitals, malls, hotels and cinema houses, he said.

Noting that a Tier II city such as Tirunelveli direly needed a serious makeover, Mr. Chandramouli wanted investors to evaluate the place “not as a low-cost destination, but as a high-value destination.”

The hardsell on the Tier-II towns also focused on the potentially lower attrition rates that companies could face by hiring from the resource pool generated by a Tier-II destination such as Tirunelveli. The other differentiators of the Tier-II segment are the availability of hassle-free space at low cost, strategic location and connectivity.

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