Small IT firms demand infrastructural support

Bhubaneswar: The Orissa government has decided to set up 'ready-made' centers for small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in the IT sector. Almost 98 percent of Orissa's IT companies that fall down in the SME sector had been pressurizing the government to provide them with infrastructure and buildings, a costly affair for these low turnover companies, reports Business Standards.

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The state IT secretary P K Mohapatra recently visited different ITSME premises in the city trying to work out the difficulties faced by these small companies, in the face of stiff competition from big names like TCS, Infosys and Satyam. Some are already operating out of Bhubaneswar from a ready-made facility like Fortune Tower. Other IT biggies like IBM, Wipro, MindTree and Hexaware and BPO Genpact are also putting up their own facilities as per their needs.

"The government is ready to provide us with land. But that is not enough. Presently, we do not have the required amount of money to set up a facility and build the required infrastructure for our units. The state will have to work out a ready-made variety for us like the Fortune Tower in Chandrashekharpur near NH-5," says an ITSME owner.

The government has recently set up three Infocities in the Temple City with a total land area of 1,074 acres. While there is virtually no space at Infocity-I to accommodate ITSMEs, around 50 to 100 acres of land has been earmarked for this sector at the upcoming Infocity-II in Janla. But the Janla area is totally devoid of any infrastructure and certainly not congenial for the small companies.

According to Mohapatra, the IT state secretary, "It is not that the government is only concentrating on the big companies. Our mainstay still continues to serve the SME sector along with the big companies. But we require some time for building infrastructure in these Infocities. Meanwhile, we are planning ready-made centers for the ITSMEs from where they could start their future work."

Orissa aims to achieve software exports of around $1 billion by 2011-12. Currently, the state's software exports stand at over Rs 739 crore and is expected to reach more than Rs 1,000 crore in the next couple of years.