The Hindu Business Line : Reliance plans IT solutions centre at Kolkata

Mr Mukesh D. Ambani, Chairman, Reliance Industries Ltd, with Mr Manabendra Mukherjee (left), West Bengal's IT & Environment Minister, in Kolkata on Wednesday. — Parth Sanyal

Kolkata , Dec. 1

THE Reliance Group will set up an IT solutions development-cum-services centre in Kolkata. This will be the first time that the group will set up such a centre outside of Mumbai, according to Mr Mukesh Ambani, Chairman and Managing Director of Reliance Industries Ltd.

The group will also set up a Dhirubhai Ambani Institute of Information & Communications .

At the inaugural session of the Infocom 2004 Conference & Exhibition organised here jointly by Businessworld and Nasscom, Mr Ambani said that the Reliance Group had already made an investment of around Rs 1,000 crore through group company Reliance Infocomm. The proposed solutions development and services centre would engage around 2,500 people within the next three years.

Mr Ambani said Kolkata had emerged as an attractive destination for new economy companies and heaped praise on the State Government's IT Department for the fast pace with which it worked. He said Kolkata had the "knowledge-edge" and, therefore, the potential to leapfrog to development in the new economy era.

No details of the proposed investment that the setting up of the development-cum-services centre and the institute of information and communications would entail could be known as Mr Ambani left the venue without speaking to the newspersons present.

Speaking on the occasion, West Bengal's Minister for Information Technology, Mr Manabendra Mukherjee, highlighted the infrastructure and policy initiatives that have been taken by the State Government to attract IT and ITES companies to the State.

Mr Jerry Rao, Chairman of Nasscom, said the Indian IT industry had miles to go and, in this regard, "one thing that can hold us back is infrastructure". According to him, it would be necessary to bring down telecom rates further and upgrade the airports infrastructure in the country.

In an apparent reference to the Left parties' opposition to foreign investment in select sectors of industry, Mr Rao said: "The State Government needs to take a pragmatic view. You cannot have openness in the State and oppose it at the Centre. Please tell this to your party."Mr Kiran Karnik, President of Nasscom, said it was time to develop Siliguri as a major IT centre because it was the gateway to the North East and "that is the city through which trade with China is going to be conducted in the future".