BackAfter Nissan, Tech Mahindra to build IT centre in Kerala
Tech Mahindra has been allocated about 12,000 sq ft in state-run Technopark third phase, India's biggest IT park, in Thiruvananthapuram, CM Pinarayi Vijayan said
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Bengaluru: The Kerala government has allocated land for Tech Mahindra to set up an IT centre, chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan said on Wednesday. The move is the latest in a series of IT investments coming to the state.
Tech Mahindra has been allocated about 12,000 sq ft in state-run Technopark third phase, India’s biggest IT park, in Thiruvananthapuram, Vijayan said in a Facebook post. Their office will start functioning within three months, generating 200 immediate jobs and about 2000 others by the time the office opens, he said.
Kerala got a major boost when global car-maker Nissan Motor Co. Ltd., decided to set up its first research hub on automated, driverless cars in Technopark on 29 June. The deal is expected to generate 500 direct jobs by the fiscal end.
Tech Mahindra, which has a large number of global companies on its clients list, is also catering to Nissan and had immediately contacted the state government after the Nissan deal, said a government official who did not want to identified.
Four other major IT companies -- Tata Consultancy Services Ltd (TCS), Infosys Ltd, Cognizant Technology Solutions Corp, Wipro Ltd -- have their offices in Kerala.
In March, the government resisted tough local opposition to change land laws and have Taurus Downtown, a joint venture between US-based Taurus Investment Holdings and Embassy Property Development Holdings, develop a ₹ 2000 crore technology center in Technopark. The project was proposed in 2012 but went into limbo because of land issues.
In the same month, Kerala also held a first-of-its-kind global IT summit titled ‘#Future’ in Kochi, under the aegis of an IT advisory committee chaired by S D Shibulal, former Infosys CEO. The event was attended by top IT executives such as Nandan Nilekani, Infosys non-executive chairman, and Vijay Shekar Sharma, founder of Paytm.
In April, global IT networking major Cisco announced it will launch an incubator for startups in Kerala, on the sidelines of a government-sponsored networking workshop for startups called Huddle Kerala, billed as Asia’s largest startup ecosystem congregation.
The chief minister also made an effort to publicize his pro-business agenda by personally congratulating the founders of Kerala-based startup Chillr when it was acquired by Stockholm-based Truecaller in June. He did it again when UST Global, a pioneer in Kerala-based IT startups, raised $250 Mn from Singapore-based sovereign wealth fund Temasek and turned into a unicorn in June.
In response, UST said it will actively work with Kerala-based startups with the money. Seperately, UST Global, along with Intel, has also agreed to set up a laptop manufacturing unit in Thiruvananthapuram, giving a boost to the chief minister’s previously stated wish to make Kerala an electronic hardware manufacturing hub.
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