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IT major Infosys has committed to start work on its software development centre in Kolkata investing around ₹100 crore in the first phase. This will be the IT major’s first facility in West Bengal.
Other major IT companies like TCS, Cognizant and Wipro already have a presence in the State through their own campuses.
Infosys’s software development centre, coming up on a 50-acre plot in Newtown — on the north-eastern fringes of the city — is expected to generate employment for 1,000 engineers initially.
The first phase of the construction will see the setting up of a 5,25,000 sq ft facility.
“The project will be completed within 15 months from the date of obtaining all statutory clearances,” the company said in a press release.
The announcement comes on a day the West Bengal Chief Minister laid the foundation stone for the ‘Bengal Silicon Valley Hub’ — an area covering 100 acres in Newtown.
The hub is an attempt to woo the IT industry. Infosys’s campus will be a part of this proposed IT hub.
Infosys, sources said, took possession of the land earlier this year. It has also got the plot registered.
Breaking the deadlock
Incidentally, the decision to allot land to the IT-behemoth was taken in 2010 under the then Left Front government.
The company had also paid the full amount of ₹75 crore (or ₹1.5 crore an acre) to the authorities.
However, the project has since then been on the back-burner with Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress – which came to power in 2011 – refusing to grant an ‘SEZ’ (special economic zone) status for the project.
The deadlock was finally broken last year when the State government decided to offer matching fiscal benefits to Infosys, compensating for the denial of the SEZ status.
A formal announcement on the benefits was later cleared by the Bengal Cabinet, sources said.
Amongst the benefits that the West Bengal government cleared included that 49 per cent of the land will be on lease and used for IT purposes. The remaining 51 per cent will be freehold land and can be used. Previously, the entire land was allotted to the company on a 99-year lease.
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