New Technopark building inaugurated in Kerala

Thiruvananthapuram, Feb 22 (UNI) The Technopark here emerged as one of the largest IT Parks in the country with Kerala Chief Minister V S Achuthanandan inaugurating a 850,000 sq ft new building, taking its total built-up area to 2.2 million sq ft.

Tejaswini, the seventh in Technopark and the largest building in the state, has already been leased out to major IT companies.

NASSCOM President Kiran Karnik was the Guest of Honour at the function, which was presided over by Minister for Law, Parliamentary Affairs and Sports M Vijayakumar.

Apart from the 15,000 professionals working in Technopark, the new building will create around 6,000 more job opportunities.

Tejaswini will house well-known companies such as Infosys, Ernst&Young, SunTec, US Technology, Allianz Cornhill, Stock Holding Corporation of India and Office Tigers.

After inaugurating Tejaswini, the Chief Minister said the state was blessed with rich human resource, good quality of life and world class infrastructure facilities at reasonable cost.

The state government would take every effort to improve the infrastructure facility and would provide maximum possible support for the growth of IT industry.

Referring to the IT boom in Kerala, Mr Karnik urged the government to aim for converting Kerala into a fully e-literate state by 2010 or even earlier. He also emphasized on bringing about high-speed connectivity between IT destinations like Kochi and Thiruvananthapuram.

Mr Karnik also commented on the immense job opportunities created by the IT industry, which had generated direct employment to around 1.5 million people and indirect employment to around six million.

The IT exports would touch 47 billion US Dollar mark this year, registering a ten fold increase compared to figures recorded ten years ago.

UNI