Following are excerpts from a report in Business Standard.

The Orissa information technology department (IT) expects the construction work of the approach road for the proposed Infocity-II project to kick off by January next year. Infocity-II is being developed on an area of over 600 acres at Janla, on the outskirts of the city by January next year.

“The state government is committed to provide external infrastructure like approach road, electricity and power for the proposed Infocity-II project. This external infrastructure will be developed at an investment of about Rs 150 crore and a provision has already been made in the state government’s budget for this investment”, Pradipta K Mohapatra, the state IT secretary told Business Standard.

He said that the state IT department was now on the look-out for anchor tenants for the Infocity-II project and software major Wipro Technologies had evinced interest in taking possession of 100 acres of land at the site. Official sources, however said that the Orissa Industrial Infrastructure Development Corporation (IDCO) may delay the process of floating advertisements for the Infocity-II project in the wake of economic downturn.

“Due to the global financial meltdown, IT majors like MindTree and Genpact are likely to defer construction work of their proposed development centres in Orissa by at least three months. The state government is also unlikely to receive fresh investment proposals from the IT and ITes (information technology services) players in the remaining months of this fiscal”, sources added.

MindTree Consulting Limited, a global IT and R&D services company had announced to resume construction of its proposed software development centre, over an area of 30 acres at Infocity in Bhubaneswar by September this year.

The company, co-headquartered in Bangalore and Somerset in New Jersey (US), is investing around Rs 200 crore for the development centre. MindTree was planning to recruit about 1,000 software professionals for the centre and eventually ramp up its headcount to 5,000.

On the other hand, the proposed global delivery centre of Genpact, the BPO (business process outsourcing) arm of US-based General Electric was scheduled to be operational by the third or fourth quarter of 2009. The BPO firm had plans to hire around 500 professionals initially for this centre and later scale up its headcount to 3,000 in the long run.

… The software exports from the state stood at about Rs 850 crore in 2007-08 and the state IT department had set a target of software exports worth Rs 5,000 crore by the end of 2011-12.

…With a headcount of around 3,000 in its Bhubaneswar centre, Infosys has targeted software exports of around Rs 800 crore from the city.

While Infosys recruited 700 people from Orissa in 2007-08, Wipro Technologies added 400 to its workforce from the state in the same period.

Following is from a report in livemint.

… Bharat Biotech International Ltd, a producer of vaccines and biotherapeutics announced that the Orissa government has selected the company as the developer for its ‘Biotech-Pharma-IT Park’ project under public-private-partnership (PPP) mode.

The proposed industrial park is coming up on a 54.86 acre land located at Mouza-Andharua in Bhubaneswar.

BBIL will promote a Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV) to undertake the integrated industrial park. The project is estimated to cost Rs100 crore and is slated to be complete in eight years, a press release issued here stated.

“Our task is to focus on rapid development of this park by developing core infrastructure and technology to enable establishment of new companies whereby new local entrepreneurs in the biotechnology field will be created,” BBIL Chairman and Managing Director Krishna Ella said in the release.

About 10 acre land, within the park, is earmarked for development of biotechnology incubation centre, which will be funded by Department of Biotechnology, Government of India, for the equipment or instrumentation.

A formal lease-cum-development agreement will be signed between the SPV and Orissa Industrial Infrastructure Development Corporation (IDCO).

The Orissa government and IDCO, in principle, have agreed to provide all the external infrastructure facilities like power supply, water supply among others, the release added.

Following is an excerpt from a report in Business Standard.

The rural BPO centre will be established by the Tata Business Support Services (TBSS) — the BPO wing and a wholly-owned subsidiary of Tata Sons — in partnership with Tata Steel Rural Development Society — a corporate NGO managed by the Tata Group for the last 60 years. To start with, it is expected to employ around 200 people.

Sources close to the development said the company has already recruited the first batch of the executives for the BPO unit, who are expected to undergo two months of training at TBSS’ headquarters in Hyderabad. TBSS has developed a specialised training programme in view the fact that most of the new recruits are not computer literate. It currently operates three rural BPO units that employ around 500 people in all.

A spokesperson from Hyderabad-headquartered TBSS confirmed the move. A senior official of the Tata group said the company was looking for graduates and under-graduates with some knowledge of English.

The centre aims at handling the Orissa region front-end and customer support works of group companies including Tata Teleservices and Tata Sky. The BPO unit will also provide services to other firms who have substantial operations in Orissa.

“Opening the BPO unit in Kalinganagar will provide us access to many educated but unemployed youths in semi-urban areas like Jajpur Road and Duburi which have a number of colleges and educational institutions in and around. The education level among the masses in these areas is comparatively high and the aspirations level of the local people is also very high,”said a Tata group executive in charge of human resources development.

“Although most youths in these areas are interested in higher-end and computer-related jobs, there were no opportunity in these places,” the executive added.

The group will initially run the BPO unit in the transit houses and rehabilitation set-up established by the company in Kalinganagar, before moving into a dedicated building in next few months. The centre will start as a voice-based BPO with focus on Bengali, Hindi and English languages other than Oriya.

Following is an excerpt from a report in Business Standard.

The Orissa government today entered into a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the K Raheja Corporation for setting up a IT park in Bhubaneswar with ‘Mindspace‘ branding. …

The proposed IT park will be implemented through a joint venture company to be formed between the state owned Industrial Infrastructure Development Corporation (IDCO) and K Raheja group. It is expected to be completed in about 3 years and an estimated Rs 250 crore will be invested in the first phase.

Three possible locations at Infocity-I, Infocity-II and Mancheswar Industrial Estate have been identified but the final location will be decided in consultation with the Raheja group.

Proposed to be built over 30 acres of land, the IT park is expected to generate employment opportunities for more than 12,000 persons in next 3-4 years. K Raheja group , which is engaged in the business of infrastructure development, has the experience of developing similar IT parks in places like Hyderabad and Mumbai. …

the park will be developed in public-private-partnership (PPP) mode. It will have about 10 lakh square feet of space to be used by different IT and ITeS companies coming to Orissa. As this project is highly employment intensive, it will be beneficial for the state.

Stating that about 3-4 lakh jobs are likely to be created in the IT and ITeS sector of the state, the minister said, the government is trying to achieve Rs 5000 crore software export target set by chief minister Naveen Patnaik well before 2012.

Ravi C Raheja said, that every ‘Mindspace’ IT park developed by the company is green certified.Citing the example of the IT park developed by the group in Hyderabad, Raheja said, the state government expected to generate about 15,000 jobs in 10 years.Within 4 years of starting the park about 50,000 jobs have already been created.The company is targeting to increase it to 1 lakh there. Bhubaneswar IT park will also generate vast employment opportunity for the people.

Following is an excerpt from a report in tathya.in.

for Pramod Bhasin, the Capital city of Orissa is emerging as an important location for the outsourcing industry.

The President and CEO of the global leader in Business Services and Technology Solutions, Genpact has pinned high hopes on Bhubaneswar as there is strong infrastructure, good talent and tremendous government backing.

Mr.Bhasin was speaking on the occasion of ground breaking ceremony for the upcoming Special Economic Zone (SEZ) on 21 November.

Graduates having command over English have fair chance of getting into Genpact, said Mr.Bhasin.

Chief Minister Mr. Patnaik laid foundation stone for the SEZ.

Spread over 12.145 acres, the commissioning of this SEZ facility will provide 5,00,000 square feet office space to provide seat for over 4000 employees.

Following is an excerpt from a report in the Statesman.

Spread over an area of 12.145 acres, the commissioning of the SEZ facility will take place in three phases between 2009 and 2011. It will provide 5,00, 000 square feet for 4,000 employees of Genpact. The development of such facility in Bhubaneswar will make it the 7th city in operation for Genpact in India.

Genpact, which has been ranked No. 1 on the 2007 list of top 15 ITeS-BPO companies in the country by NASSCOM, has recently been rated among the top three BPO employers for 2007 in Dataquest-IDC E-Sat (Employee Satisfaction) survey.

Following is an excerpt from a report in the Business Standard.

ICICI Group’s eastern regional hub for back office operations, coming up at Chandaka industrial estate in Bhubaneswar, will be commissioned in 2009. This is one of the four regional hubs planned by the group.

“We expect the first phase to be commissioned in the next 18 to 24 months,  and, hopefully, the hub will be commissioned by the summer of  2009,” K V Kamath, managing director and chief executive officer, ICICI Bank, said.

Talking to newsmen after the bhoomi pooja (ground breaking ceremony) for the proposed hub, Kamath said the second phase is scheduled to be commissioned a year later if every thing goes right.

He said the hub will have a built-up area of 1.25-1.5 million square feet in the first phase, and will accommodate about 15,000 people.

The group had earlier signed an MoU with Utkal University and KITT for offering skill-enabling and vocational courses in the domain of banking, finance and insurance.

Kamath said about 10,000-12,500 people will be employed in the Bhubaneswar hub in phases.

Following is an excerpt from a Pioneer report

Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik on Friday laid the foundation stone of the Semiconductor Technology Innovation Centre. The centre will be the first of its kind in the country and will mark the beginning of a new era in the development of the IT Industry in Orissa.

Silicon Park will be established in Infocity SEZ with total project outlay of Rs 80 crore over a period of five years. The centre would provide employment opportunities to 1,600 software professionals …

Laying the foundation stone, Patnaik said the centre would take up chip design, embedded software development for products used in IT, Telecommunication and emerging technologies. It will also provide an entrepreneurial business environment and a semiconductor product eco-system.

“My Government is actively considering declaring Electronics and hardware manufacturing as a thrust sector,” he said, adding that the State Government is pursuing an ambitious target of achieving one billion US dollar in software export from the State by 2012.

Chairman of the STG Pvt Ltd M Chandrasekhar Reddy and eminent scientist from Silicon Valley Damodar Reddy were present on the occasion.

The report in New Indian Express on the same event has the following extra information.

The Chief Minister announced that the State Government will set up three more IT special economic zones (SEZs) in the State.

One of them, the knowledge industry township, will be set up jointly with the Union Urban Development Ministry and NASSCOM while the second one will be established by DLF.

While the above report mentions about three new SEZ’s, it only talks about two. The following from Samaja mentions that the third one will be a BPO based SEZ.

Following are excerpts from the Kalinga Times report.

… The Chief Minister said his government was focussing on growth of agriculture, irrigation, infrastructure development, rural roads, drinking water, and growth in the IT sector, education and healthcare. Improvement in the people’s quality of life was the main objective of his government, Patnaik observed.He said that a special package, comprising a series of schemes, had been finalised by the State government for ensuring development of agriculture.

While a target had been fixed to bring 35 per cent of cultivable area in all the 314 blocks under irrigation cover, contract farming had been introduced in several areas for the benefit of the farmers, Patnaik said.

Stating that rural development was also a priority area for his government, Patnaik said efforts were on to improve rural road connectivity and ensure availability of safe drinking water in villages. The Jaldhara scheme was being implemented to provide piped water facility to 1000 villages in the first phase.

The government had also launched new schemes such as the Biju KBK Yojana, Gopabandhu Gramin Yojana and Biju Gramjyoti Yojana for rural development.

Mentioning about the excellent performance of tribal schools in this year’s High School Certificate examination, Patnaik said that priority was being accorded to education of tribal children. A total of 1000 hostels for tribal girls were being established in the State, he added.

As regards growth in the information technology sector, the Chief Minister said Bhubaneswar was fast growing as a major IT hub in the country. Companies such as TCS, Infosys, Wipro, Genpact and Satyam had already started their operation and very soon many companies were going to begin BPO business, he said.

The State’s software export was likely to cross Rs 700 crore during the current financial year, the Chief Minister said.

Patnaik said the government was also taking measures for proper utilisation of the rich mineral resources for the development of the State and its people. A total of 25 steel industries had already started production, he added. …

Following are excerpts from televisionpoint.com’s report.

 Mumbai based Zee Interactive Learning Systems (ZILS) is looking at its child care division, Kidzcare, as a major growth-driver in the years to come. …

Arun Khetan, CEO, ZILS said, “The franchised childcare centres, Kidzcare, are geared to meet the gap in proper existing childcare programmes. We will be setting up a total of 35 Kidzcare centres in this financial year.”

According to Khetan, the demand for these centres is mostly from the IT and BPO crowd. “Thus, the Kidzcare centres will mostly come up in places like Bangalore, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Delhi, Bhubaneswar, Mumbai, Pune and Chennai.”

ZILS has plans to add another 70-75 centres in the next fiscal, while the target by 2011-12 has been set at 500 centres. The company expects Kidzcare to contribute about 25% to its turnover within the next five years. The Kidzcare concept operates on the franchisee model. The cost of setting up each centre ranges between Rs 10 lakh to Rs 45 lakh, not including the premises.

New Indian Express reports the starting of the BPO company Medwrite in Bhubaneswar. Following is an excerpt from that report.

MedWrite India, a Hyderabad based healthcare business process outsourcing (BPO) firm, launched its city operations on Wednesday.

The state-of-the-art centre will engage 200 trained professionals. Addressing mediapersons, chief executive officer Srinivas Rao said plans are afoot to raise the head-count to 500 professionals by the fall of 2008.

It handles medical billing and transcription services to a vast number of hospitals, clinics and physicians across the United States.

The firm would shortly be launching a free training programme for undergraduates and graduates to cater to the growing needs of skilled manpower in the industry. MedWrite is chosen as the international partner of MedQuist, a leading medical transcription company in the US …

New Indian Express reports Vasant Scribes coming to Bhubaneswar to provide training and employment opportunities. Following are excerpts from that report.

Leading medical transcription company in India, Vasant Scribes is set to provide training to the unemployed youth of the State to join the field even as it has commenced commercial operations from its Bhubaneswar facility at STPI here.
The company which, at present, has 35 medical transcriptionists intends to expand the facility to over 300 within one and half years. And the bulk of the staffers would be the youths who successfully complete the training.

… The company has applied for one acre of land in the Infocity and has submitted the building plans and layout to the Government.

… But in a stark departure from prevailing practices, the training would not only be imparted free of cost but the trainees would also be given a handsome stipend.
Eligibility would be Plus II pass, preferably with a science background.

… Headquartered at Hyderabad, the company employs over 500 personnel in the city.