THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: President Ram Nath Kovind will lay the foundation stone of Technocity, a satellite IT city located within 8-kilometre radius of Technopark in Thiruvananthapuram, on October 27. Once operational Technocity will be as big as the Technopark’s Phase 1, 2 and 3 combined, and provides employment opportunities for over 1 lakh IT professionals.“Technocity is a very important milestone for Kerala IT to strengthen its presence in the IT Map of the World and the state government will facilitate everything to ensure this,” said IT Secretary M Sivasankar.
The new project is likely to address the demand for creating a hub for emerging technologies. “By setting up centres of excellence to promote research and development, we hope to gain early lead in emerging technologies and become a major hub in the area with focus on technology-based products,” said Hrishikesh Nair, CEO of Kerala IT Parks.
The Technocity project was announced a few years ago and the government has completed the acquisition of the 400 acres required for the project at Mangalapuram. One portion of the project (300 acres) has been set aside for IT and IT-enabled services and the remaining 100 acres will be dedicated to set up a Knowledge City. This is envisaged as ‘Centre of Excellence’ (CoE) for future technologies like Cognitive Analytics, IoT, Cybersecurity, Block Chain, e-Mobility, and Space Science.
“We are on the lookout for an academic partner for the Knowledge City to promote new technologies and to facilitate business collaborations for startups.” said Hrishikesh Nair.Leading IT organisations such as TCS, SunTec, IIITM-K, KASE, etc. have already taken land for development at Technocity. Technopark Phase 1 is a 165-acre fully developed campus, with over 365 companies and approximately 60,000 employees. Phase 2 is 86 acres allocated to Infosys and UST Global. Phase 3, a 92-acre campus is the latest development where the newly commissioned IT twin towers are situated.