New
Delhi: Keralas
progress in pitching itself as an investment destination in the
business process outsourcing (BPO) and information
technology-enabled services (ITES) sector gathers momentum with
increasing interest from non-resident Indian entrepreneurs in the
US. Kerala has earned their wholehearted commitment to support the
states initiatives.
B
V Jagadeesh, president and CEO of the US-based company Netscaler,
will now mastermind Kochis information architecture in order to
make it a global communication hub. This will leverage the
excellent communication infrastructure in the state, and will
build on the fact the Kochi already handles nearly two-thirds of
Indias data traffic.
Jagadeesh is a renowned figure in IT industry and has been wooed
by many state governments for building their information
architectures. An authority on Internet infrastructure, he has
pioneered several start-ups, and through Exodus Data Center paved
way for shared services, managed services and co-hosting, which
led to the entry of data centres in India.
Says
Kerala IT minister K Kunhalikutty: "Jagadeeshs technical
advice will further enhance the state government in its plans to
position Kerala as a global leader in the BPO / ITES space."
The high-level delegation from Kerala comprising Kunhalikutty,
IT secretary Aruna Sundararajan and Kerala State IT Mission CEO N
R Mahalingam is currently in the US to meet several companies
and to promote Kerala as an investment destination in the BPO/
ITES space.
Commenting on the success
of the roadshow so far Kunhalikutty says: "I am excited about
the quality of response that has been shown by the US business
community. I am delighted with our visit and am confident that
this will reap immense benefits for the state of Kerala."
The
INDus Entrepreneurs (TiE), represented by Kanwal Rekhi, M
Sreedharan and Arun Joshi, has agreed to promote Kerala as a
destination for investments from the US. TiE will also support
start-up entrepreneurs in Kerala with venture capital and provide
mentoring services.
In addition, it will also
create innovation clusters for IIITMK and Technopark, to showcase
the state of Kerala. These support services will be rendered from
the TiE chapter in Kerala that will also be opened with immediate
effect.
Both TiE and Silicon Valley Indian Professionals Association (SIPA)
laud the incubation facilities set up at Technopark,
Thiruvananthapuram, and in Indias first ITES habitat in Kochi.
The say it will make a significant difference to entrepreneurs
with start-up operations.
SIPA has offered to help
entrepreneurs with various programmes and using the incubation
facilities at Technopark to front-end some of these facilities.
These associations will help Kerala to be a showcase and a role
model for entrepreneurial development.
The Kerala team also visited IBM and Hewlett-Packard facilities
with a view to forge an e-governance strategic alliance. At the
former the delegation was given a demonstration of some of the
leading e-governance initiatives of various countries and it was
agreed that both the parties to come to a meaningful conclusion,
and investment decision would actively follow this visit.
Both the companies were
quite impressed with the Keralas IT initiatives and the level
of commitment in terms of their implementation of the IT policy,
which was launched as recently as December 2001.
Kerala
has been aggressively promoting Kochi as a global hub for ITES,
BPO and disaster recovery. In positioning itself as an
investment destination in the BPO/ITES space, Kerala is leveraging
the excellent infrastructure already present as well as the high
levels of skilled English-speaking manpower pool available in the
state.
With a high-value
proposition and aggressive marketing, the industry seems to be
convinced that Kerala means business.
|