TN has set the ball rolling to establish Tidel Park at Tiruchi

Tamil Nadu government has set the ball rolling of establishing a Tidel Park at Tiruchi at a cost of around ₹600 crore to house nearly 10,000 employees. Once established, the rock town along the Cauvery river will be the third city after Chennai and Coimbatore to get a Tidel Park.

Tidel Park Ltd, a joint venture of Tamil Nadu Industrial Development Corporation and Electronic Corporation of Tamil Nadu, has invited request for proposal (RFP) from consulting firms to establish the park at Panjapur in Tiruchi.

Promising choice

In the backdrop of the new norm of ‘work from home’ shaping up into ‘work from home town’, Tidel Park proposes to create a vibrant IT ecosystem in other bigger cities, especially in South Tamil Nadu and Tiruchi has emerged as a promising choice, the RFP says.

Tiruchi has several central educational Institutions like NIT, IIM, IIIT and 33 engineering colleges located in and around the city. Presently, the youth graduating from these institutions travel to far off places in search of jobs. Hence, on a preliminary assessment, an IT Park in Tiruchi emerged as a viable project, creating value for the youth around the district.

IT ecosystem

A source said that Tamil Nadu has around 10 lakh IT employees. Of this, Chennai has 8 lakhs; Coimbatore around 1.5 lakh; Madurai around 30,000; Tiruchi around 10,000 and the balance is split among various smaller locations. The IT ecosystem in Tiruchirapalli seems to be improving with over 50 companies located there.

Ramkumar Ramamoorthy, Partner, Catalincs and former CMD, Cognizant, India, says despite being a university town, Trichy has been quite underleveraged by IT companies over the years. Unlike other tier-2 cities in Tamil Nadu such as Coimbatore and Madurai which attracted large anchor IT companies such as Cognizant, Bosch, Honeywell and HCL, Trichy was home to only small, home-grown companies until Omega Healthcare entered the city and grew to about 6,000 employees in a short period of time.

“Given the profile of educational institutions in Tiruchi, it has a unique advantage of attracting both technology and business process companies. Institutions such as NIT, Sastra and SRM in the technology space, and St. Joseph’s, Jamal Mohammed, Holy Cross, National, Bishop Heber and Seethalakshmi Ramaswamy college in both the technology and business process space, produce tens of thousands of high-quality graduates and post-graduates who are greatly suited for IT companies.”

“What we have seen with Coimbatore and Madurai is that once the anchor clients cross a certain threshold in terms of employees, the city attracts dozens of others quickly. For example, in the last 24 months alone, IBM, Accenture, LTIMindtree, TechMahindra, Infosys and Deloitte have made a beeline for Coimbatore, and are expanding rapidly. Given this context, having plug-and-play, Class A commercial real estate such as Tidel Parks in Trichy can attract many more companies and help expand the ecosystem,” Ramamoorthy said.

Aditya Narayan Mishra, Managing Director and CEO of CIEL HR, said, with the establishment of Tiruchi Tidel Park, a significant transformation is expected in the IT landscape of the town. This development is poised to attract a growing number of IT companies from tier-I cities, expanding their presence in Tiruchi.

This move holds immense potential for the IT sector, as it offers several advantages. Companies can access a skilled talent pool and resources at a comparatively lower cost compared to tier-I cities, primarily due to the region’s lower cost of living. Moreover, the ripple effect of this expansion is expected to extend beyond the IT sector, creating indirect job opportunities in sectors such as infrastructure and real estate, he said.

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