Kerala offers the right ambience for an IT boom.
THE JASWINI IN TECHNOPARK is the largest single built-up space in Kerala.
Consider these announcements from Kerala:
* SunTec Business Solutions, a Thiruvananthapuram-based provider of customer-friendly pricing and billing solutions, has decided that its flagship product suit, Transaction Billing Management Solutions (TBMS-F), will couple its tool with Finacle, the core banking solution created by Infosys.
* Another Kerala-based brand, IBS Software Services, has carved out a niche in the air transportation services business. The latest airline to adopt its `desi' passenger services system solution, AiRES, is Australia-based Virgin Blue Airlines; it follows in the footsteps of WestJet of Canada and VirginAmerica.
* The world's largest tax services provider, Kansas City-based H&R Block, has entrusted US Technology, another leading software and services player in Kerala's capital, with its software development and testing, on a long-term basis.
All three companies are clustered in or around the 300-acre (120-hectare) Technopark, India's first integrated software-hardware park, which is home to around 110 Information Technology (IT) players. They have found in Kerala a mix of professional competence, communication infrastructure and the right ambience to create cutting edge, world-class tools and applications.
Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) has its own site, mainly devoted to training, within Technopark. Infosys, another IT `biggie', has a 1.5-lakh sq ft campus, and has begun work on a separate 50-acre site to house its Special Economic Zone that will eventually employ over 20,000 persons.
When Technopark inaugurated its latest block, the 8.5-lakh sq ft Thejaswini, in February - the space was already sold out - the addition made it (at 3.2 million sq ft) the largest IT park in India. Thejaswini is the largest single built-up space in Kerala.
With Technopark often having to put up `houseful' signs, new companies have branched out to their own campuses around the same area and in the 200-acre Infopark campus in Kochi. The Leela Group's IT initiatives, and L&T and Wipro's first Kerala-based operations are based here.
Kochi's logistic advantages - the State's best connected, most modern airport and the closest access to international bandwidth - has proved attractive for private initiative such as the Muthoot Pappachan Group's 3.5-lakh sq ft Technopolis SEZ, whose anchor occupant is the IT services player Sutherland Global Services. Also recently, the State signed a landmark agreement with Dubai-based Technology and Media Free Zone Authority to create Smart City, a centre for high-tech activity in Kochi.
Network Systems and Technologies Pvt. Ltd. (NeST) was one of the charter members of Technopark, with a niche clientele in Japan and the rest of East Asia for its networking solutions. Today the group has grown to embrace automotive solutions, health care and industrial automation even as its software expertise and strengths in embedded and semiconductor technology have seen it rated an ISO 9001:2000 and a CMMI Level 5 company. It has set up its own units not just in Kochi and Thiruvananthapuram, but in Bangalore and at six international locations.
Kerala has taken up the Central government's challenge to create new Knowledge Parks. Recently, the Kerala Industrial Infrastructure Development Corporation (KINFRA) held a brainstorming session in Kozhikode, chaired by Minister for Industries Elamaram Kareem. Local trade organisations, infrastructure developers, heads of the National Institute of Technology - Kozhikode, Calicut University and the Indian Institute of Management - Kozhikode, and experts from ICICI who created India's first Biotech Knowledge Park in Hyderabad, joined to etch the contours of what could be the first hi-tech knowledge park in the Malabar region. Kareem promised that the State government would shortly float a new corporate entity to set up the proposed park.
While pursuing these techno-commercial objectives, the State has tried to take its people along - with people-oriented technology initiatives. This is a tightrope act: the State is still grappling with the general perception that it is prey to labour militancy, one that often clouds its record in literacy, health care and general quality of life. The installation of a Left-oriented coalition of parties, whose record for attracting international industry has been patchy to say the least, did not make matters easy. Though in fact, it was this same Front that in its previous tenure launched path-breaking initiatives to devolve planning authority to self-governing bodies. Today, the State supports such grassroots planning and local spending through its two facilitating arms, the Kerala State IT Mission and the Information Kerala Mission. The State IT Mission has a mandate to create people-centred tools and technologies - something it has done with notable success with the Akshaya e-literacy programme and the Fast Reliable Instant Effective Network for Disbursement of Services (FRIENDS), a single window citizens' transaction centre that is now available in all 14 districts of the State.
Akshaya made headlines three years ago when its pilot scheme in Malappuram turned the hilly tract into India's first e-literate district. Nearly 600 Akshaya e-kendras sprang up in the district (they have now been rationalised to around 350). By June 2007, seven more districts came on the map - with an average of 200-250 centres each and the infrastructure is falling into place in the remaining six districts.
The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP)-supported e-Krishi is to create market-driven agri-business centres across the State. Here, too, Malappuram is the pilot district. K. Anvar Sadath, manager, e-Governance and Head (Akshaya) Malappuram Cell at the IT Mission, reports that it has made a tangible difference to the power of small farmers . The State Civil Supplies Corporation recently procured over 3,000 tonnes of paddy from Malappuram farmers for Rs.8.5 a kg, when earlier middlemen paid them Rs.7. The entire operation was done at the www.e-krishi.org website.
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