InfoCity set for expansion

By agencies   |   Monday, 31 July 2006, 19:30 IST
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AHMEDABAD: The InfoCity, an IT park developed in the last decade and currently home to about 7,000 employees in 42 companies that set up shop in the InfoTower-I, is all set for an embellished expansion. An announcement has been made as 10 more information technology and IT-enabled services (ITeS) companies are sighting the state capital as their ground force. With 10 more companies moving into InfoTower-II, another 6,000 jobs are expected to be generated by this year-end, locking to the Gandhinagar-based InfoCity. According to Anupam Saxena, Director of Creative IT Inc, Florida, which set up the joint venture with the State Government's Gujarat Informatics Ltd, through the Creative InfoCity Ltd, the current proposition indicated that the jobs to be created in the city would reach around 40,000 in the next four years. The total investments made by the Creative Group, promoted by a Gujarati NRI, Dilip Barot, in creating infrastructure in InfoCity was about Rs 100 crore in a 115-acre area. The IT companies that set up their business in the complex had also invested around Rs 100 crore, Saxena said. Among the 10 new companies that are setting up their shops in InfoTower-II are Microsoft which had initially invested Rs 15 crore for setting up a laboratory for the Indian languages and Tata Consultancy Services, boasting of two incubators to give the IT companies a feel of the place before they finally decide to move in with a total invested about Rs 60 crore. Earlier, Saxena told a news conference that InfoTower-II has already, about 80 per cent of its 1.25 lakh sq ft area occupied. InfoCity was a model of public-private partnership in the State in creating a residential-cum-office complex, a city-within-the city, he said.