labels: investments, it news
Keralas Delhi roadshow woos US IT firms news
Our Convergence Bureau
16 July 2002

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.




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Keralas Delhi roadshow woos US IT firms