On July 2013 Technopark India’s first & currently one of the three largest IT parks completed 23 years of its existence. Started in July 1990 exactly a year before India’s economic reforms it was envisaged as a facility to nurture & advance the development of high tech industries in the state. With the visionary technocrat Mr.K.P.P.Nambiar as chairman & Mr. G Vijayaraghavan as CEO, it was set up under the aegis of Electronics Technology Park Kerala, an autonomous body under the Department of Information Technology, Government of Kerala. And true to its founding vision Technopark brought in an IT boom in Kerala & propelled Trivandrum as one of the major IT hubs in the country. Spread over 300 acres, and about 4.5 m. sq.ft of built-up space, Technopark hosts over 290 IT and ITES companies, including 6 CMMI Level 5, 2 CMMI Level 3 and several ISO 9000 certified companies, employing over 42,500 IT Professionals.
Technopark has a Special Economic Zone in the campus with IBS Software Services and Tata Consultancy Services as co-developers. IBS has already commenced operations while TCS is in the process of constructing their 1 million sq. ft. built-up space at an investment of around Rs 500 crores. More than 75% of the total revenue of Rs. 35000 crores generated by the IT sector in the state comes from Technopark. It is the only IT Park in India having ISO 9001:2000, ISO 14001:2004, OHSAS 18001:2007 and CMMI LEVEL 4 certifications.
Technopark is expanding rapidly “Technopark phase 3 “developed on 92 acres of land, presently has the twin towers Aanamudi and Ponmudi having a total area of 1 million square feet ready for occupation. The third phase is being developed both as a Special Economic Zone and a Non-Special Economic Zone. It includes shopping malls, commercial complex, executive hotel facilities, star hotel convention Centre, and a multiplex. A special passage will connect the commercial complex and other facilities in Technopark Phase III to the National Highway. Once Phase III is fully operational, Technopark will have a total of 7.1 million square feet of built-up area (Phase I, Phase II, Phase III, and the building at Kollam Technopark included), making it the biggest IT park in the country.
Even as Phase three of Technopark nears completion, the ground work has already begun for the development of next phase christened as “Technocity”. Technocity, which is slated to come up in the Pallipuram-Mangalapuram area on the outskirts of the city, is Kerala’s most ambitious IT infrastructure project yet. It will have will have state-of-the-art IT/ITES Buildings, Commercial Malls, Residential Apartments, Educational Institutions, Hospitals, Multiplexers, Club House, &Recreational facilities .The icing on the cake is IT major Tata Consultancy Services’ (TCS) plan to set up its Global Learning and Development Centre in”, pegged to be one of the largest such training facilities in the world, at“Technocity”. And when it becomes fully operational the Centre can accommodate up to 15,000 trainees at a time, with about four batches a year.
With the state’s IT sector set to grow by leaps & bounds it is sunny days ahead for Technopark
