Kochi is the new favourite IT destination: Smart City, Infopark beckoning investors

Kochi will witness two landmark events in the IT sector within a month –the inauguration of the first IT building of Smart City Kochi (SCK) and the commencement of work on Phase II of Infopark.
SCK management has confirmed that over 50 % of the space in the first building has already been confirmed for occupancy by the IT majors. Phase-I SCK would generate close to 5,500 jobs.

The LEED Platinum certified building with 100,000 sft on a single floor plate is designed as a ‘lifestyle at work’ project, offering terrace gardening, large plazas, social spaces, supporting amenities, food court, banks and ATMs. Provisions have also been made to install solar panels (of 300 KW) on the rooftop, which aims to generate 500 KwH of power.

Work is also progressing fast on the supporting infrastructure including roads, bridges, power receiving and distribution systems, sub-stations, water storage and distribution, drainage, cable and pipe trenches.

Construction of Phase-II of the SCK project is expected to commence next year. Leading Project Management Consultants (PMCs) have already submitted proposals for the second building. The proposals are under scrutiny and architects and building specifications would be finalised in the next few weeks.

Infopark, the first IT Park developed by Government of Kerala in Kochi, has achieved spectacular growth both in terms of world-class IT space and employment generation over the last decade.
“Infopark has attracted investment worth Rs 3,000 crore and generated over Rs 2,350 crores of software exports revenue. The park has attained all milestones in terms of IT space, employment generation and software exports,” says Infopark CEO Hrishikesh Nair.

The park has now 4.5 million sqft technology workspace with state-of-the-art infrastructure. The 100-acre Kochi campus is currently home to 200 plus companies, including some of the big names in the industry such as TCS, Wipro, Cognizant, UST Global, Affiliated Computer Services, OPI Global, IBS Software Services etc.

The park which currently employs around 24,000 IT professionals has almost finished its Phase-I development, with the construction of major IT campuses by TCS, Wipro, CTS and IBS Software nearing completion. Apart from Infopark owned infrastructure, parallel developments by co-developers such as Leela Soft, L&T Techpark and Brigade Enterprises are also taking shape in the campus, thus offering IT companies a choice of office space solutions to fit their requirement and budget.

Work on the Rs 2500-crore Phase II project of Infopark, spread across 160 acres, is set for inauguration and is expected to be ready for operations by 2020. The phase II project is aimed at creating 8 million sq ft work space for IT/ITeS companies and generating about 80,000 job opportunities.

Only Kochi and Mumbai in India have landing points for submarine cable links for 15 GBPS bandwidth and have therefore India’s cheapest bandwidth costs. The SEA-ME-WE3 and SAFE cables touch Kochi; making Kochi a sought-after destination for IT enabled services.

The recent NASSCOM survey on 9 leading Indian ITES destinations covering a range of parameters including land costs, power and communication infrastructure ranked Kochi as the second best ITES destination above Metros like Bangalore, Mumbai and New Delhi.

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