The Kerala government has allotted both built-up space and land to Japanese automotive major Nissan Motors to set up its first and only digital innovation hub at Technocity near Technopark here.

The digital hub will be a research and development facility that will be shared by the Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi Alliance, a Franco-Japanese strategic partnership, an official spokesman announced here .

R&D nerve centre

It will function as the nerve centre of the company’s research in electric and automated vehicles and host a team of engineers and scientists to design innovations in automated and electronic vehicles space.

The research and development work will focus on Artificial Intelligence, cognitive analytics, machine learning and other digital technologies.

On setting up operations, the company is expected to generate 3,000 direct and ‘multiple times’ as many indirect employment opportunities. The campus will be named as ‘Nissan Knowledge City’. Thirty acres will be allotted in the first phase and another 40 acres in the second.

Operations will begin from a 25,000-sq-ft space in Yamuna building in the Technopark phase-III campus as well as other co-developer space. Additional space will be taken up in the IT building coming up in Technocity.

Favourable factors

Nissan chose Kerala for the significant initiative, considering multiple factors ranging from availability of required talent pool in IT and engineering, airport connectivity, cost effectiveness, quality of life, social amenities and less congested roads to positive feedback from successful IT companies at Technopark.

Hrishikesh Nair, CEO, Technopark, said that the State government’s vision of creating a hub of emerging technologies is fructifying through this Knowledge City.

“With Nissan’s strategic engagement, we are confident that we will be able to rope in a host of IT companies also to our State,” he added. Nissan and Technopark expected to sign an MoU by the month-end or the first week of July.

Nissan’s entry into Kerala marks a significant milestone in the concerted campaign taken up by the State government to market the State as a global IT destination, the official spokesman said.

Policy-making committee

As part of its IT policy, the government had constituted a high-power IT committee, which meets every quarter under the guidance of Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan.

Its agenda is developing Kerala as a digital State, by bringing in big ticket companies/IT investments and thereby, generating IT employment/revenue in the State.

The 12-member committee has Infosys Co-Founder SD Shibulal as Chairman, along with industry stalwarts in IT, including Anthony Thomas, then Group CIO of GE India.

In late 2017, Thomas joined as CIO in Nissan Motor Corporation and has been instrumental in initiating the process in which Nissan decided on Thiruvananthapuram as the place to host its digital technology hub.

Along with its auto-making partners Renault and Mitsubishi, Nissan is aiming to launch a $1-billion fund for auto tech start-ups across the globe. It plans to launch 17 electric models to achieve an annual vehicle sales of 14 million units by 2022 against 10.6 million units in 2017.

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